I was alone--alone with the earthquake.... There was a wood-cellar in one of the out-houses, access to which was easy and safe. One of my host's domestics had slipped flint and steel into my hands. In less than half-an-hour's time, a cheerful fire was crackling before me. I drew forth an old lumbering arm-chair from the wood-cellar, together with my provision of fuel. I shrouded myself in the ample folds of one of Don Marzio's riding-cloaks; I sat with folded arms, my eyes riveted on the rising blaze, summoning all my spirits round my heart, and bidding it to bear up. The sun had long set, and the last gleam of a sickly twilight rapidly faded. A keen, damp, north-east wind swept over the earth; thin, black, ragged clouds flitted before it, like uneasy ghosts. A stray star twinkled here and there in the firmament, and the sickle-shaped moon hung in the west. But the light of those pale luminaries was wan and fitful. They seemed to be aware of the hopelessness of their struggle, and to mourn in anticipation of the moment when they should faint in fight, and unrelieved darkness should lord it over the fields of the heavens. The town of Aquila, or the Eagle, as the natives name it, is perched, eagle-like, on the brow of an abrupt cliff in the bosom of the loftiest Apennines. Monte Reale, Monte Velino, and the giant of the whole chain, the "Gran Sasso d'Italia," look down upon it from their exalted thrones. Within the shelter of that massive armor, the town might well seem invulnerable to time and man. But now, as I gazed despondingly round, the very hills everlasting seemed rocking from their foundation, and their crests nodding to destruction. Which of those mighty peaks was to open the fire of hell's artillery upon us? Was not Etna once as still and dark as yonder great rock? and yet it now glares by night with its ominous beacon, and cities and kingdoms have been swept away at its base.