How easily we are cheated by the imagination! I could almost have sworn, as I hurried by, that I saw some of the thigh-bones move to and fro, and the jaws of the skulls open and shut, and extend, in ghastly grimace, a repulsive welcome from the dead to the living, who would soon be no more than those hideous remains. There is a certain fascination, however, I must confess, in the sombre, subterranean city. The parade and panoply of grim mortality held me like a spell, and again and again I found myself far in the rear of the solemn excursionists. I liked to fall behind and watch the thick shadows which gave way before and closed in behind them, and listen to the hollow and dreary echoes of their voices murmuring through the mighty vaults. I fancied the babbling company to be a crew of resurgent spirits, whose duty it was to visit the cemeteries of the globe, and awake the dead to judgment. They had a certain weird semblance as they flitted on in the dim distance, and their tones came back to me as if they had fallen from tongues long silent in the grave. The fancy pleased me, and I indulged it, and the kindred fancy that the heaps of bones were animated, until, sometimes, so strong were the suggestions of the place, I really confounded the living with the dead. Once, in going by an avenue running to the right, I yielded to a temptation to step into it, to look at an extraordinary heap of bones. This did not occupy more than thirty seconds,—at least, it did not appear longer,—and yet, when I stepped back into the broader passage (the main avenues in the Catacombs are much wider than those I have mentioned outside the vestibule), I found, to my utter consternation and horror, that my companions had left me; I could not see the light of their tapers, nor could I hear the least echo of their steps or voices. [Sidenote: LOST IN THE CATACOMBS.] [Sidenote: FEELINGS OF HORROR.]