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The beasts with seven heads, the signs in the heavens, the sound of the last trumpet were well-known terrors that haunted and enchanted my imagination.
In a book, a relic of my Huguenot ancestors, printed in the last century, I had seen pictures of these things.

It was a "History of the Bible," and the weird pictures illustrating the visions of the Book of Revelation, invariably, had dark backgrounds.

My maternal grandmother kept this precious book, which she had brought from the Island, under lock and key in a cupboard in her room; and as it was still my habit to go there at the sad hour of dusk, it was then that I usually asked her to lend me the book, so that I might turn over its leaves as it lay upon her lap.