I expressed my deepest sympathy for her sufferings in the best Latin I could muster, and indeed I was well able to sympathise with her, for did not I feel what it was to be buried alive and to endure the gnawing pangs of hunger?
"Alas, poor ghost!" I felt inclined to say, with Hamlet, and I could not help muttering to myself, "How hard, alas!—just for one fault, for one piece of human frailty, resulting from the over tenderness of a woman's heart, to die such a horrible death."
"An es estraneus in hoc loco?" she asked me, having overheard my soliloquy and perceiving that it was in a foreign tongue.
"Civis Brittanicus sum," I replied, and then I began to relate my history, my misfortunes, and how I had prayed to be delivered from such a dreadful death, begging her to show me the way out of these horrid catacombs as soon as possible.
"Hac conditione,"—On this condition—she said.
"Quænam est?" What is it? I asked.
She replied thus: "Annulus quem in digito geris quem quidem circiter quinque Sestertia valet et meus erat nom habui a viro quem delexi vende ad levandum meum spiritum."
Here was a surprise! The ring that I had purchased previously to starting off for the catacombs belonged and had been worn by the spirit before me when in the flesh! The man of whom I bought it spoke the truth then—when he said that it had been found where the vestal virgins used to be buried alive. What a curious coincidence! Now I was called upon to sell it again to pay for masses for the poor disembodied spirit, and as a condition of being set free myself from this dungeon. I was loth to part with the ring I had paid so highly for, especially now that such an interesting history was attached to it. Yet, what will not a man do to save his life?
"Sic erit," I replied. It shall be done.
"Jamnunc sequere me," said she, beckoning to me with her pale emaciated finger, which together with the hand and arm was so skinny that it might have belonged to a skeleton. I followed accordingly, and was led through many a long corridor, passing many a tomb of martyred saint, though by a different route to that which I had taken. My guide walked on before me in silence. That is to say, she did not converse with me more, but ever to herself I heard the muttered words "Peccavi! peccavi!" beating her breast as she went.