There was a horrid jerking and cracking sound, as the cord strained with her weight: her blue eyes opened—oh! frightful was their aspect, as the light of the sputtering torches fell on them; and still more frightful were the distortions of that enchanting form—but for a moment only. There it swung round vibrating, then hung still and motionless; the fair head drooped heavily forward, and the long bright ringlets floated in disorder on the passing wind. "To horse, and away!" cried Di Bivona; and ere his party had clattered through the Porto Nuovo, Marco and I returned to our apartment, sickening with disgust and horror. "Basta! let us quit this accursed den, and seek some place of amusement," said the knight. "There is surely some gaming-house or merry cantina in Monteleone. Let us go." "With all my soul," said I. "Some of the Corsican Rangers are in garrison here. I had a brother amongst them once, and know the corps well, having many friends in it." "Buono: we shall be sure to fall in with the officers somewhere, at the cafés or the promenade." We left the inn about the same time that two men of the Campagnia di Morti bore away the remains of Luisa Gismondo in a shell, covered by a pall; around it walked six others, carrying torches, and completely enveloped in sackcloth, having even their faces covered by a black hood, which descended to the chin. They formed a grim and mysterious group, as they wound, by the light of their links, through a dark and narrow alley, to the entrance of some obscure and ghastly charnel-house. "And Luisa was the bosom friend of Bianca!" thought I, as their monotonous chant died away. "What a tale of horror I have to tell the family of Alfieri!" Of the Major Gismondo I shall have to relate more hereafter. *CHAPTER X.* *THE SIEGE OF SCYLLA.* Next evening we arrived at Scylla: the Scylla of classical antiquity, hoary and worn with the storms of ages, dark with the lapse of years; the stronghold, successively, of the Greek, the Roman, the fair-haired Goth, the swarthy Saracen, the mail-clad Norman knight, the proud Italian prince, the prouder Spaniard, and, lastly, the grasping Gaul. As we approached it, Castelermo bade me remark the roar of the ocean in the caverns beneath the rock; which rises perpendicularly from the water, and is still of considerable danger to mariners. To the ancients it was terrible, on account of its real and fabled dangers, which occupy so prominent a place in the heroic poems of Homer, Ovid, and others; and famous for the loves of Glaucus, and the magic art of Circe, the daughter of the sun (who transformed the beautiful nymph Scylla into that tall rock, which "bulged the pride of famed Ulysses’ fleet") and the roar of whose dogs was so terrible to Æneas and his followers.