The door opened slowly, and Ordener found himself face to face with the pale features and tall, thin figure of Spiagudry, who, his clothes in disorder, his eyes fixed, his hair standing erect, his hands covered with blood, held a lamp, whose flame trembled less visibly than his long and lanky figure. VI. _Pirro._ Never! _Angelo._ What! I believe you would try to play the virtuous man. Wretch! If you utter a single word-- _Pirro._ But, Angelo, I beseech you, for the love of God-- _Angelo._ Do not meddle with what you cannot prevent. _Pirro._ Ah! When the Devil holds one by a single hair, as well yield him the entire head. Unhappy that I am! EMILIA GALOTTI. An hour after the young traveller with the black plume left the Spladgest, night fell, and the crowd dispersed. Oglypiglap closed the outer door of the funereal structure, while his master, Spiagudry, gave the bodies deposited within a final sprinkling. Then both withdrew to their scantily furnished abode, and while Oglypiglap slept upon his wretched pallet, like one of the corpses intrusted to his care, the venerable Spiagudry, seated at a stone table covered with old books, dried plants, and fleshless bones, was buried in grave studies which, although really very harmless, had done no little to give him a reputation among the people, for sorcery and witchcraft,--the disagreeable consequence of science at this period. He had been absorbed in his meditations for some hours, and, ready at last to exchange his books for his bed, he paused at this mournful passage from Thormodr Torfesen: “When a man lights his lamp, death is beside him ere it be extinguished.” “With the learned doctor’s leave,” he muttered, “he shall not be beside me to-night.” And he took up his lamp to blow it out. “Spiagudry!” cried a voice from the room where the corpses lay. The old man shook from head to foot. Not that he believed, as another might have done in his place, that the gloomy guests of the Spladgest had risen in revolt against their master. He was enough of a scholar to be proof against such imaginary terrors; and his alarm was genuine, because he knew the voice which called him only too well. “Spiagudry!” angrily repeated the voice, “must I come and pull off your ears before I can make you hear me?” “Saint Hospitius have mercy, not on my soul, but on my body!” said the terrified old man; and with a step both hastened and delayed by fear, he moved towards the second side door, which he opened. Our readers have not forgotten that this door led into the mortuary.