les. Now for the
repercussion."

I had not many minutes to wait. Again the iron-hoofed steeds and heavy
wheels of the state chariot of the prince of darkness were heard
tramping and rattling in their course. Once more the subterranean
avalanche gathered and burst. Once more the ground beneath throbbed and
heaved as if with rending travail. Once more heaven and earth seemed to
yearn to each other; and the embers of my watch-fire were cast upward
and strewn asunder. It was an awful long winter night. The same sable
clouds rioting in the sky, the same cruel wind moaning angrily through
the chinks and crevices of many a shattered edifice. Solitude, the
chillness of night, and the vagueness, even more than the
inevitableness, of the danger, wrought fearfully on my exhausted frame.
Stupor and lethargy soon followed these brief moments of speechless
excitement. Bewildered imagination peopled the air with vague,
unutterable terrors. Legions of phantoms sported on those misshapen
clouds. The clash of a thousand swords was borne on the wind. Tongues of
living flame danced and quivered in every direction. The firmament
seemed all burning with them. I saw myself alone, helpless, hopeless,
the miserable butt of all the rage of warring elements. It was an
uncomfortable night. Ten and twelve times was the dreadful visitation
reproduced between sunset and sunrise, and every shock found me more
utterly unnerved; and the sullen, silent resignation with which I
recomposed and trimmed my fire had something in it consummately abject,
by the side of the doleful accents with which the poor half-hoarse nuns,
my neighbors, called on their blessed Virgin for protection.

The breaking morn found me utterly prostrated; and when Don Marzio's
servants had so far recovered from their panic as to intrude upon my
solitude, and offer their services for the erection of my tent in the
garden, I had hardly breath enough left to welcome them. Under that tent
I passed days and nights during all the remainder of February. The
shocks, though diminished in strength, almost nightly roused us from our
rest. But the people of Aquila soon learned to despise them. By one, by
two, by three they sought the threshold of their dismantled homes. Last
of all, Don Marzio folded his tent. His fears having, finally, so far
given way, as to allow him to think of something beside himself, he
exerted himself to free me from confinement. He furnished me with
faithful guides, b