On leaving the small passage conducting to his room, he entered the long corridor which he had traversed with the landlady; on turning, however, as he thought, to the staircase by which he had ascended, he suddenly found himself in a small but lofty chapel. It was too dark to see distinctly the decorations of the altar, but it seemed as if gilding had not been spared; two small adjoining apartments he next examined, and then completely forgetting whether he had entered from the right or left hand, he walked inquisitively forward until a broad gloomy passage brought him to a corridor, which he instinctively felt to be the place where on moonlight nights one might perchance be disposed to romance. The doors opposite to him, placed close to each other, had probably belonged to cells; over each was a black-looking picture, portraits of the abbots, the faces and hands looking most ghastly in their indistinctness. A broad staircase was near, but fearing to lose his way completely, he contented himself for the present with reconnoitring the garden and a lake from a sort of lobby window. Woods and mountains were in the distance, but every moment becoming less distinct; the oppressive calm had been succeeded by a wild wind which bent the trees in all directions, and ruffled the surface of the water. Interested in the approaching thunder-storm, he stood at the window until his revery was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, voices, and the clapping of doors. He turned quickly from the window, walked to the end of the corridor, turned to the left, and entered a very narrow passage looking into a small quadrangular court, which seemed once to have been a garden; it still possessed a few trees, a fountain, and a luxuriant growth of rank grass. He mounted a flight of stone steps, which brought him into the organ loft, whence he had a full view of the monastery church. The lamp which hung suspended before the altar threw fitful gleams of light on the objects in its immediate vicinity—all the rest was in shadow; behind the organ was a sort of vaulted, unfinished room, containing nothing but a most clumsy apparatus for filling the bellows. Just as he was about to leave this uninteresting place, two persons entered the adjoining loft; recognising the voice of his travelling companion, and perceiving she was accompanied by her sister, he commenced a precipitate retreat by another entrance than that next the organ; in his haste, however, he entangled his foot in the rope communicating with the belfry, so that his slightest movement might alarm the whole household. While endeavouring, as well as the darkness would permit, to extricate himself, he was compelled to become auditor to a conversation certainly not intended for his ears. “And you don’t think him at all good-looking?” asked Crescenz.