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A LABYRINTH OF CHAMBERS 191 vestibule, with stairs in it leading to upper and lower chambers. The disposition of these it is impossible to describe to the reader, for this reason if for no other, that I could not master it myself. I began my explorations by mounting. I came to a curious loggia, which exhibited three natural pictures through its three open arches—silvery mountain slopes on which pine trees showed like pigmies, the sea, and the unfathomable depths of country lying below. Then through some crooked passages and up some winding stairs, straying fortuitously, I came to a small chapel, with fragments of frescoes still clinging to the apse and with two priests' chambers leading out of it. Eetracing my steps, I discerned, in spite of the twi-light, that there were frescoes in the passages also. Then there came more stairs, more rooms and passages, and then I began descending. At the door where we had entered Mrs. St. John was waiting for me ; and we now took the steps that led to the lower regions. Here was a crowd of heavily-vaulted rooms, with small chinks for windows, through which the daylight glittered. Their number and variety of level was all I had time to remark about them ; and then down some more steps, through a narrow pointed doorway, we issued into the open air, and I found myself, on the most singular spot I ever remember to have visited. It was a little grassy triangular space of ground, bracketed out, on the enormous seaward precipice, and seemed to have been once a garden. Beyond it,

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