“ Oh! ’tis a dream!” she murmured; and she felt rough hands bearing her away.
CHAPTER IV. LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA —LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE WHO
ENTER HERE
In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was almost as much of it in the earth as above it. Unless built upon piles, like Notre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a church, had always a double bottom. In cathedrals, it was, in some sort, another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious, blind, and mute, under the upper nave which was overflowing with light and reverberating with organs and bells day and night. Sometimes it was a sepulchre. In palaces, in fortresses, it was a prison, sometimes a sepulchre also, sometimes both together. These mighty buildings, whose mode of formation and vegetation we have
