Italian towns are very perplexing to strangers. Keep to the principal thoroughfares built in modern days, and you may have a reasonable hope of finding your way about; but once get enmeshed in the crooked, narrow, winding streets of the period of the middle ages and you are lost. The Italians, like Nature, delight in curves, and these narrow alleys, with cobble-stone pavements and no side-walks, dignified by the name of streets, twist in and out, and here and there, between forbidding houses, seven or eight stories in height, under heavy archways, which threaten to fall and crush the unwary stranger, and down steep flights of worn steps, until you become quite bewildered by the labyrinthian windings. Then these houses are built high in order to exclude the burning sun from the alleys, and a cold, humid feeling pervades the entire network of streets; so that what with the gloom, the twistings, and the treacherous pitfalls in dark corners, one feels like Orpheus going down to Hades in search of lost Eurydice. Having been warned of the difficulty of exploring these unknown depths, I had mostly confined my wanderings to the broad, modern streets and the populous piazzas; therefore as long as my spectre guide kept to the Via Pallone, which begins at the Ponte Aleardi and ends at the Piazza Vittoria Emanuele, I felt quite safe. When, however, after leaving the Piazza she plunged into the narrow streets of the medieval period, I hesitated at first to follow her. I did not know my way, I was a stranger, and unarmed; moreover, I knew not into what unknown dangers I might be led by this mysterious woman who had emerged from the graveyard. Curiosity, however, prevailed over fear, and as at any moment I might lose sight of her, and thereby never discover if she were of this or the other world, I followed her boldly into the intense gloom into which she had vanished. My eyes could hardly pierce the darkness, and I feared I would not be able to keep her in sight, when luckily a portion of her cloak became disarranged, and I saw the vivid glimmer of a white dress, on which I kept my eyes fastened as a guiding star. Here and there in the houses lights were burning dimly, but the hour being late, no people were in the streets; and as I followed this noiseless phantom along the solitary alleys, with the dark houses on either hand, and the white gleam of the moonlit sky above, I felt as if I were moving in a dream. Onward she glided, turning down here, climbing up there, until my feet were weary with walking; and besides, not knowing the way, I stumbled frequently, which gave me many a bruise. The darkness, however, seemed no obstacle to the ghoul, who walked onward as rapidly as if she were still in the moonlight; on the contrary, it was only by the greatest care that I could grope my way sufficiently quickly to keep her in sight, and prevent her from discovering me by my frequent stumbles.