"I fancied that perhaps you had seen his spirit and had mistaken it for himself in the flesh. I forebore to touch the corpse from that same feeling of awe that I have just described, and though at the time I was perfectly satisfied that he was really dead, yet I still resolved to sit up all night, concealed within the confessional, so as to be able to tell your Excellency on the morrow that I had fulfilled my promise. "I accordingly shut myself in, and gazed steadfastly at the features of the corpse, never taking my eyes off all the time, in order to assure myself beyond a doubt whether this were really death or merely its counterfeit. I gazed long and intently, but in vain did I endeavour to discover the slightest breathing or other signs of life. Whether the dim light of one candle prevented me from seeing sufficiently well, I know not. "All was silent as the tomb, and as I gazed in breathless suspense, hour after hour flew by, till at length I heard the old church clock toll forth the dread hour of midnight. The last stroke had hardly died away--How shall I describe to you my terror, oh, Signor?--when suddenly I heard the church doors violently shaken. You know how nervous one becomes in the dead of the night at hearing any sort of noise unexpectedly that one cannot account for. Imagine, then, my sensations, Eccellenza, if you can, when, hidden within the confessional at this witching hour of night, with every nerve on the stretch, and looking out into the solemn gloom of the church, illumined only by the solitary candle placed at the head of the corpse--when all honest peasants, with their families, were in bed and fast asleep, and the greatest silence reigned everywhere, suddenly to hear a bang and a crash at the old church doors, which soon gave way--you know how rotten they are, Signor--and there entered, cursing and swearing, a troop of--well, upon my soul, Signor, I took them to be emissaries of the arch-fiend, sent to secure the soul of the defunct. "However, after having attentively examined their forms, which were hardly less wild than those of the foul fiends themselves, if all accounts of them be true, I satisfied myself that they were, after all, human--men of flesh and blood like ourselves. Signor, they were the brigands. "I should say there were about a dozen of them, for I did not think of counting them, so great was my fright. They rushed helter-skelter into the church, and without as much as glancing at the corpse, seized the candle that stood burning near its head, and, striding towards the altar placed the candle thereon and proceeded to count their ungodly gains. I trembled in every limb; a cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I felt my hair stand up, while my teeth chattered in my head.