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another opening. Someone must have heard us coming and have hurried to bar the passage between ourselves and him. The reverberation was too loud, I could not say whether it came from behind our shoulders or from the stretch which we have still to cover.'

'Could it be the thief of the keys?'

'You keep asking me questions which cannot be answered. Perhaps he had the idea of taking a stroll this evening, perhaps not. Did you by any chance keep an eye on the entrance to the closet this evening?'

I admitted that I had not given much thought to that.

'Bravo,' commented the abbot with a sneer. 'So we have come down here without knowing whether we are following in someone's footsteps or he in ours, and, what is more… Look!'

We were at the top of a staircase. Lowering the lantern to our feet, we saw that the steps were in stone and skilfully carved. After an instant's reflection, the abbot sighed: 'I have no idea what may await us down below. The steps are steep: if there is someone there, he knows that we are coming. Is that not true?' he concluded, calling down the stairs and creating a horrible echo which made me jump. Then, armed only with the feeble lamp, we began our descent.

When the steps came to an end, we found ourselves at last walking along a pavement. Judging by the echo of our footsteps, we appeared to be in a great hollow, perhaps a cavern. Abbot Melani thrust the lantern upwards. Great brick arches appeared in profile, cut into a wall so high that we could not distinguish its top, and through the arches led a passage towards which we had all the while been moving unawares.

Scarcely had we halted than all fell silent again. For a moment, the lantern flame weakened, until it almost went out. It was then that I noticed a furtive rustling to our left.

'Did you hear?' murmured the abbot, alarmed.

We again heard rustling, this time a little further off. Atto gestured to me not to move: and instead of following the passage that lay before us, he ran on tiptoe under the arch to our right, beyond which the light from the lantern no longer reached him. I stood waiting, with the lantern in my hand, petrified. Again there was silence.

A new rustling, this time nearer, came from behind my shoulders. I turned around sharply. A shadow slipped to my left. I rushed towards Abbot Melani, more to protect myself than to put him on guard.

'No-o-o,' he whispered as soon as I could see him by the light of the lamp: he had silently shifted a few paces to the left and was squatting on the ground. Again, a grey silhouette emerged from who knows where and passed swiftly between us, trying to move away from the arches.

'Catch him!' screamed Abbot Melani, approaching in his turn, and he was right, because that someone or something seemed to trip up and almost fall. I rushed out blindly, praying God that Atto would reach him before I did.

But just at that moment, there fell upon me, and everywhere around me, a loud and horrible rain of cadavers, skulls and human bones, and mandibles and jawbones and ribs and shoulder-blades and disgusting filth, struck down by which, I fell to the ground and remained there. Only then did I fully distinguish that revolting stuff from close quarters, as I lay half-buried and almost dead. I tried to free myself from the monstrous crunching mortiferous mush, whose horrid gurgling mingled with a duet of infernal bellowing of which I could guess neither the origin nor the nature. What I could now recognise as a vertebra obstructed my vision and what had once been the skull of a living person looked at me threateningly, almost suspended in the void. I tried to scream, but my mouth uttered no sound. I felt my strength failing me, and while my last thoughts gathered painfully into a prayer for my soul's salvation, as in a dream, I heard the abbot's voice resounding through the vaults.

'That's enough, I can see you. Halt or I fire.'

It seemed to me that a long time passed (but now I know it was only a few minutes) before I was called back from the formless nightmare into which I had fallen by the echoing sound of a strange voice.

I noted with alarm that a strange hand was holding my head up, while someone (a third being?) freed my limbs from the frightful mass under which I was all but buried. Instinctively, I drew back from these strange attentions but, slipping clumsily, I found myself with my nose up against a nauseous-smelling member (impossible to tell which one). Suddenly overcome by the exertions of my stomach, in a few seconds I threw up all my dinner. I heard the stranger curse in a language that seemed similar to my own.

While I was still trying to recover my breath, I felt the kindly hand of Abbot Melani grasp me under the armpit.

'Courage, boy.'

I rose painfully to my feet, and by the dim light of the lamp I caught sight of an individual, wrapped in a sort of gown, muttering as he bent down to the ground in a febrile attempt to isolate from my gastric secretions the no less vomit-inducing heap of human remains.

'To each his own treasures,' sneered Atto.

I saw that Abbot Melani was holding a little device in his hand; from what I could make out, it ended with a piece of shining wood inset with gleaming metal. He was pointing it threateningly at a second individual, dressed like his companion and seated on a carved stone.

In the moment when the lantern lit up this figure, I was thunderstruck by the sight of his face, that is, if one could call it a face. For it was nothing but a symphony of wrinkles, a concerto of folds, a madrigal of ribbons of skin which seemed to hold together only because they were too old and tired to rebel against their enforced companionship. The grey and diffident pupils were crowned by the intense red of the eye, which made of the whole one of the most fearsome sights I had ever beheld. The picture was completed by sharp brown teeth, worthy of an infernal vision by Melozzo da Forli.

'Corpisantari,' murmured the abbot to himself, disgustedly, shaking his head.

'You could at least have shown a little more care,' he added sardonically. 'You scared these two gentlemen.'

And he lowered the little device with which he had been keeping the first mysterious individual covered, returning it to his pocket in token of peace.

While I was cleaning myself up as well as I could under the circumstances, and struggling to overcome the nausea that still afflicted me, I was able to see the face of the second individual when he stood up for a moment. Or rather, to catch a glimpse of him, because he wore a filthy greatcoat with sleeves that were too long and a cowl that almost completely covered his face, leaving a slit through which, when the light permitted it, one could distinguish his features. And that was just as well, for after many patient attempts to observe him I discovered the existence of a whitish half- closed eye and of another swollen eyeball, enormous and protruding, as though it were almost about to fall to the ground; a nose like a deformed and cankered cucumber, and a yellowish, greasy skin; while, as to the mouth, I could never have sworn that he had one, were it not for the formless sounds that occasionally emerged from that vicinity. From the sleeves, two hands would furtively emerge from time to time, hooked and clawed, and as decrepit as they were swift and predatory.

The abbot turned and met my fearful and questioning gaze. With a nod, he pointed to the first of the two, impatient to recover his freedom so that he could rejoin his companion in his disgusting sorting of bones from the contents of my stomach.

'How curious,' said Atto, dusting his sleeves and shoulders carefully. 'In the hostelry I am forever sneezing, yet all the dust these two wretches have on them has not caused me to sneeze even once.'

And he explained that the two strange beings whom we had encountered were members of the miserable (yet adequately fed) band of those who spent their nights exploring the innumerable cavities under the city of Rome in search of treasures. Not jewels or Roman statues, but the most holy relics of the saints and martyrs which abounded in the catacombs and tombs of the martyrs of the Holy Roman Church, disseminated throughout the length and breadth of the city.

'I do not understand,' I broke in. 'Are they really allowed to take these holy relics from the tombs?'

'Not only is it permitted: I daresay that it is even necessary,' replied Abbot Melani with a hint of irony. 'The places frequented by the first Christians are to be regarded as fertile ground for spiritual questing, and sometimes even hunting, ut ita dicam, by elevated souls.'

Saint Philip Neri and Saint Carlo Borromeo had indeed been in the habit of praying in the catacombs, so the abbot reminded me. And at the end of the last century, a courageous Jesuit, a certain Antonio Bosio, had descended into the most recondite and obscure crevices and had explored all the cavities under Rome, making many marvellous discoveries and publishing a book entitled Roma Subterranea, which had met with great and