Am I mad? Or are there really ghosts? That adventure of last night has
shaken me to the very depth of my soul.

I went at nine, as the mysterious letter had bid me. It was bitterly
cold, and the air full of fog and sleet; not a shop open, not a window
unshuttered, not a creature visible; the narrow black streets,
precipitous between their, high walls and under their lofty archways,
were only the blacker for the dull light of an oil-lamp here and there,
with its flickering yellow reflection on the wet flags. San Giovanni
Decollato is a little church, or rather oratory, which I have always
hitherto seen shut up (as so many churches here are shut up except on
great festivals); and situate behind the ducal palace, on a sharp
ascent, and forming the bifurcation of two steep paved lanes. I have
passed by the place a hundred times, and scarcely noticed the little
church, except for the marble high relief over the door, showing the
grizzly head of the Baptist in the charger, and for the iron cage close
by, in which were formerly exposed the heads of criminals; the
decapitated, or, as they call him here, decollated, John the Baptist,
being apparently the patron of axe and block.

A few strides took me from my lodgings to San Giovanni Decollato. I
confess I was excited; one is not twenty-four and a Pole for nothing.
On getting to the kind of little platform at the bifurcation of the two
precipitous streets, I found, to my surprise, that the windows of the
church or oratory were not lighted, and that the door was locked! So
this was the precious joke that had been played upon me; to send me on
a bitter cold, sleety night, to a church which was shut up and had
perhaps been shut up for years! I don't know what I couldn't have done
in that moment of rage; I felt inclined to break open the church door,