stening to her with mouth half open and absorbing interest in
her blue eyes, my brother examining the works of a clockwork engine
which he had just taken to pieces; whilst from the room overhead,
inhabited by a Count, a veteran who had won distinction in the campaigns
of '64 and '66, came strains of 'The Watch on the Rhine.' Every now and
then my mother would lean back in her chair and close her eyes, and I
knew intuitively she was thinking of me. Mein Gott! If she had only
known the truth. These tableaux faded away, and the gruesome awfulness
of my surroundings thrust themselves upon me. A damp, foetid smell,
suggestive of the rottenness of decay, assailed my nostrils and made me
sneeze. I choked; the saliva streamed in torrents down my chin and
throat! My recumbent position and ligaments made it difficult for me to
recover my breath; I grew black in the face; I imagined I was dying. I
abruptly, miraculously recovered, and all was silent as before. Silent!
Good heavens! There is no silence compared with that of the grave.

"I longed for a sound, for any sound, the creaking of a board, the
snapping of a twig, the ticking of an insect--there was none--the
silence was the silence of stone. I thought of worms; I imagined
countless legions of them making their way to me from the surrounding
mouldering coffins. Every now and then I uttered a shriek as something
cold and slimy touched my skin, and my stomach heaved within me as a
whiff of something particularly offensive fanned my face.

"Suddenly I saw eyes--the same grey, inscrutable eyes that I had seen
before--immediately above my own. I tried to fathom them, to discover
some trace of expression. I could not--they were insoluble. I
instinctively felt there was a subtle brain behind them, a brain that
was stealthily analysing me, and I tried to assure myself its intentions
were not hostile. Above, and on either side of the eyes, I saw the
shadow of something white, soft, and spongy, in which I fancied I could
detect a distinct likeness to a human brain, only on a large scale.
There were the cerebral lobes, or largest part of the forebrain,
enormously developed and overhanging the cerebellum, or great lobe of
the hindbrain, and completely covering the lobes of the midbrain. On the
cerebrum I even thought I could detect--for I have a smattering of
anatomy--the usual convolutions, and the grooves dividing the cerebrum
into two hemispheres. But there was something I had never