Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrend’ring up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to th’ insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod.—Thanatopsis.
It seemed a dream still, but a horrible sunless dream, all that followed; and in after years Ambrose Bradley never remembered it without a thrill of horror, finding it ever impossible to disentangle the reality from illusion, or to separate the darkness of the visible experience from that of his own mental condition. But this, as far as he could piece the ideas together, was what he remembered.
Accompanied by the mysterious Abbé, he seemed to descend into the bowels of the earth, and to follow the figure of a veiled and sibylline figure who held a lamp. Passing through dark subterranean passages, he came to a low corridor, the walls and ceiling of which were of solid stone, and at the further end of which was a door containing an iron grating.
The priest approached the door, and said something in a low voice to some one beyond.
There was a pause; then the door revolved on its hinges, and they entered,—to find themselves in a black and vault-like chamber, the darkness of which was literally ‘made visible’ by one thin, spectral stream of light, trickling through an orifice in the arched ceiling.