Day was breaking. The luster of the moon had failed. Gaunt and grisly the old ruin began to increase in visibility. The full, gray, prosaic light emphasized details, whether of workmanship or wreck, which the silver beams had been inadequate to show. It was difficult to say if the fine points of ornamentation had the more melancholy suggestion in the wanton spoliation where they were within easy reach, or in those heights and sequestered nooks where distance had saved them from the hand of the vandal. The lapse of time itself had wrought but scant deterioration. The tints of the fresco of ceilings and borders were of pristine delicacy and freshness in those rooms where the destroyed hearths had prevented fires and precluded smoke, save that here and there a cobweb had veiled a corner, or a space had gathered mildew from exposure to a shattered window, or a trickling leak had delineated the trace of the falling drops down the decorated wall. All exemplified the taste of an earlier period, and where paper had been used in great pictorial designs it fared more hardly than had the painting. The vicissitudes of the voyage of Telemachus, portrayed in the hall, were supplemented by unwritten disaster. His bark tossed upon seas riven in gaps and hanging in tatters. The pleasant land where he and his instructive companion met the Island goddess and her train of nymphs, laden with flowers and fruit for their delectation, was cataclysmal with torrential rains and broken abysses. The filial adventurer was flung from the storied cliffs into a Nirvana of blank plaster. It had required some muscular force and some mental energy to destroy the marble mantel-pieces. Here and there bits of the carving still lay about the floor, the design thus grossly disfigured, showing with abashed effect above the gaping cavity of the torn-out hearth.