ings and
noises during the night. He tells, at length, the story, already referred
to, of the strange thing which happened to him, on the eve of his
departure from Pavia in 1562, while he was awaiting tidings from Rome as
to his appointment at Bologna. "I wore on the index finger of my right
hand a selenite stone set in a ring, and on my left a jacinth, which I
never took off my finger, this stone being large and hexagonal in shape.
I took the selenite from my finger and put it beneath my pillow, for I
fancied it kept off sleep, wearing still the jacinth because it appeared
to have the opposite effect. I slept until midnight, when I awoke and
missed the ring from my left hand. I called Jacopo Antonio, a boy of
fifteen years of age who acted as my servant and slept in a truckle bed,
and bade him look for my rings. He found the selenite at once where I had
placed it; but though we both of us sought closely for the jacinth we
could not find it. I was sorrowful to death on account of this omen, and
despair seized upon my soul when I remembered the dire consequences of
similar signs, all of which I had duly noted in my writings. I could
scarcely believe this to be a thing happening in the order of nature.
After a short delay I collected my thoughts, and told the servant to bring
a light from the hearth. He replied that he would rather not do this, that
he was afraid of the darkness, and that the fire was always extinguished
in the evening. I bade him light a candle with the flint, when he told me
that we had neither matches nor tinder nor sulphur. I persisted, and
determined that a light should be got by one means or another, for I knew
that, if I should go to sleep under so dire an omen, I must needs perish.
So I ordered him to get a light as best he could. He went away and raked
up the ashes, and found a bit of coal about the bigness of a cherry all
alight, and caught hold of it with the tongs. At the same time I had
little hope of getting a light, but he applied it to the wick of a lamp
and blew thereon. The wick was lighted without any flame issuing from the
live coal, which thing seemed to me a further marvel."

After a search with the candle the ring was found on the floor under the
middle of the bed, but the marvel was not yet worked out: the ring could
not possibly have got into such a place unless it had been put there by
hand. It could not have rolled there, on account of its shape, nor could
it have fallen from the