on the ledge of the grating which admitted to the cell what light
there was, and fell into a deep and bitter reverie. Eight hours passed,
and then the complete solitude in which he was left began to trouble
him. Another hour, another, and another; but when night really fell, to
take Casanova's own account,

'I became like a raging madman, stamping, cursing, and uttering wild
cries. After more than an hour of this furious exercise, seeing no one,
not hearing the least sign which could have made me imagine that anyone
was aware of my fury, I stretched myself on the ground. . . . But my
bitter grief and anger, and the hard floor on which I lay, did not
prevent me from sleeping.

'The midnight bell woke me: I could not believe that I had really passed
three hours without consciousness of pain. Without moving, lying as I
was on my left side, I stretched out my right hand for my handkerchief,
which I remembered was there. Groping with my hand--heavens! suddenly it
rested upon _another_ hand, icy cold! Terror thrilled me from head to
foot, and my hair rose: I had never in all my life known such an agony
of fear, and would never have thought myself capable of it.

'Three or four minutes I passed, not only motionless, but bereft of
thought; then, recovering my senses, I began to think that the hand I
touched was imaginary. In that conviction I stretched out my arm once
more, only to encounter the same hand, which, with a cry of horror, I
seized, and let go again, drawing back my own. I shuddered, but being
able to reason by this time, I decided that while I slept a corpse had
been laid near me--for I was sure there was nothing when I lay down on
the floor. But whose was the dead body? Some innocent sufferer, perhaps
one of my own friends, whom they had strangled, and laid there that I
might find before my eyes when I woke the example of what my own fate
was to be? That thought made me furious: for the third time I approached
the hand with my own: I clasped it, and at the same instant I tried to
rise, to draw this dead body towards me, and be certain of the hideous
crime. But, as I strove to prop myself on my left elbow, the cold hand I
was clasping became alive, and was withdrawn--and I knew that instant,
to my utter astonishment, that I held none other than my own left hand,
which, lying stiffened on the hard floor, had lost heat and sensation
entirely.'

That incident, though comic, did not cheer Casanova, but gave him mat