occasions, was
the concourse of strangers from all parts of Campania, that the space
before it was usually crowded for several hours previous to the
commencement of the sports, by such persons as were not entitled by
their rank to appointed and special seats. And the intense curiosity
which the trial and sentence of two criminals so remarkable had
occasioned, increased the crowd on this day to an extent wholly
unprecedented.

While the common people, with the lively vehemence of their Campanian
blood, were thus pushing, scrambling, hurrying on--yet, amidst all their
eagerness, preserving, as is now the wont with Italians in such
meetings, a wonderful order and unquarrelsome good humor, a strange
visitor to Arbaces was threading her way to his sequestered mansion. At
the sight of her quaint and primaeval garb--of her wild gait and
gestures--the passengers she encountered touched each other and smiled;
but as they caught a glimpse of her countenance, the mirth was hushed at
once, for the face was as the face of the dead; and, what with the
ghastly features and obsolete robes of the stranger, it seemed as if one
long entombed had risen once more amongst the living. In silence and
awe each group gave way as she passed along, and she soon gained the
broad porch of the Egyptian's palace.

The black porter, like the rest of the world, astir at an unusual hour,
started as he opened the door to her summons.

The sleep of the Egyptian had been usually profound during the night;
but, as the dawn approached, it was disturbed by strange and unquiet
dreams, which impressed him the more as they were colored by the
peculiar philosophy he embraced.

He thought that he was transported to the bowels of the earth, and that
he stood alone in a mighty cavern supported by enormous columns of rough
and primaeval rock, lost, as they ascended, in the vastness of a shadow
athwart whose eternal darkness no beam of day had ever glanced. And in
the space between these columns were huge wheels, that whirled round and
round unceasingly, and with a rushing and roaring noise. Only to the
right and left extremities of the cavern, the space between the pillars
was left bare, and the apertures stretched away into galleries--not
wholly dark, but dimly lighted by wandering and erratic fires, that,
meteor-like, now crept (as the snake creeps) along the rugged and dank
soil; and now leaped fiercely to and fro, darting across the vast gloom
in wild g