After we had descended to the bottom of this passage, and again retraced
our steps to the highest part, the guide took a large cannon-ball, and
sent it, with his whole force, rolling down the hollow, arched way,
rumbling, and reverberating, and bellowing forth long thunderous echoes,
and winding up with a loud, distant crash, that seemed to come from the
very bowels of the earth.

We saw the place, near the centre of the mausoleum, and lighted from
above, through an immense thickness of stone and brick, where the ashes
of the emperor and his fellow-slumberers were found. It is as much as
twelve centuries, very likely, since they were scattered to the winds,
for the tomb has been nearly or quite that space of time a fortress; The
tomb itself is merely the base and foundation of the castle, and, being
so massively built, it serves just as well for the purpose as if it were
a solid granite rock. The mediaeval fortress, with its antiquity of more
than a thousand years, and having dark and deep dungeons of its own, is
but a modern excrescence on the top of Hadrian's tomb.

We now ascended towards the upper region, and were led into the vaults
which used to serve as a prison, but which, if I mistake not, are
situated above the ancient structure, although they seem as damp and
subterranean as if they were fifty feet under the earth. We crept down
to them through narrow and ugly passages, which the torchlight would not
illuminate, and, stooping under a low, square entrance, we followed the
guide into a small, vaulted room,--not a room, but an artificial cavern,
remote from light or air, where Beatrice Cenci was confined before her
execution. According to the abbe, she spent a whole year in this
dreadful pit, her trial having dragged on through that length of time.
How ghostlike she must have looked when she came forth! Guido never