Tales Of A Traveller, By Washington Irving

















































































































 -  They took the same delight
to work upon my ardent feelings that had been so mischievously
exercised by my father's - Page 71
Tales Of A Traveller, By Washington Irving - Page 71 of 433 - First - Home

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They Took The Same Delight To Work Upon My Ardent Feelings That Had Been So Mischievously Exercised By My Father's Household.

I can recollect the horrors with which they fed my heated fancy during an eruption of Vesuvius.

We were distant from that volcano, with mountains between us; but its convulsive throes shook the solid foundations of nature. Earthquakes threatened to topple down our convent towers. A lurid, baleful light hung in the heavens at night, and showers of ashes, borne by the wind, fell in our narrow valley. The monks talked of the earth being honey-combed beneath us; of Streams of molten lava raging through its veins; of caverns of sulphurous flames roaring in the centre, the abodes of demons and the damned; of fiery gulfs ready to yawn beneath our feet. All these tales were told to the doleful accompaniment of the mountain's thunders, whose low bellowing made the walls of our convent vibrate.

One of the monks had been a painter, but had retired from the world, and embraced this dismal life in expiation of some crime. He was a melancholy man, who pursued his art in the solitude of his cell, but made it a source of penance to him. His employment was to portray, either on canvas or in waxen models, the human face and human form, in the agonies of death and in all the stages of dissolution and decay. The fearful mysteries of the charnel house were unfolded in his labors - the loathsome banquet of the beetle and the worm.

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