Night after night she continued at her dangerous indulgence, while her eyes were visibly contracting a dull film, her cheeks wasting and falling in, and her pulse growing fainter and fainter. It was not a sight for a son to look upon, and tend with idle fancies and the levities of fable. I felt this and remonstrated, and the agonizing reality before me awakened me for a moment to the vanities of books. But she persisted in her demand and still preserved her listening posture, although the sense of hearing and the faculty of attention were sinking rapidly. Some weeks had been consumed in this way, when one winter night she desired me to read a certain history from a favorite volume of old legends. The history she selected was that of a supernatural appearance that was alleged to have followed a gentleman of Verona with the fidelity of a shadow. The history set forth the arts and devices by which he endeavored to perplex and evade it--how he went into dark and lonely places, and how still his spectral companion stood at his side--how he rushed into crowded scenes, forcing his way violently through the mass, in the hope that he would thus escape; but no matter how dense the multitude, or by what stratagems and confederacy the gentleman sought to bury himself out of sight, the apparition in its human shape was ever standing or moving close beside him. The strangest thing was that it bore an unnatural likeness to him, not only in its face and form, but in its actions, which were always so faithfully and so instantaneously copied after him, that they resembled a reflection in a mirror. He tried the most painful and unexpected contortions, only to see them reproduced with a rapidity that mocked his despair. The history went on to say how he invented various schemes, and underwent many fearful trials of sorcery, in the hope of banishing or subduing his horrid familiar, but all in vain, for the fiend baffled all his efforts, and was still found at his side, day and night, whether he rode or walked, or threw himself on his couch for repose--how he summoned courage to speak to it at last, and was answered by the echoes of his own voice--how he swam floods with the ghastly thing floating along with him on the surge--how he climbed the highest hills and fled into savage caverns, the familiar still toiling or groveling beside him--how, in a fit of madness, he tried to grapple it on the edge of a precipice with the desperate intent of dragging it down with him into the abyss below, and how the shape wrought in the struggle, impalpable to the touch, but visible to the sight, like painted air--how, after enduring horrible tortures, the man wasted away, and became a mere shadow, the spirit waning and fading in like manner--and how the priests of a holy order, in the solitudes of the Apennines, hearing of these strange events, bethought them of shriving the man, and expelling the incarnate devil that had worked such inexplicable misery upon him.