CHAPTER XIV.
1st MONK .-- The storm increases; hark! how dismally It sounds along the cloisters! BERNARD .-- As on I hastened, bearing thus my light, Across my path, not fifty paces off, I saw a murdered corse, stretched on its back, Smeared with new blood, as though but freshly slain.
JOANNA BAILLIE.
The apartment adjoining the council-room of the castle, and selected this night as the scene of King Ferdinand's banquet, was at the commencement of the storm filled with the expected guests.

From forty to fifty were there assembled, chosen indiscriminately from the Castilians and Arragonese, the first statesmen and bravest warriors of the age.

But the usual animated discussion, the easy converse, and eager council, had strangely, and almost unconsciously, sunk into a gloomy depression, so universal and profound, that every effort to break from it, and resume the general topics of interest, was fruitless.

The King himself was grave almost to melancholy, though more than once he endeavored to shake it off, and speak as usual.

Men found themselves whispering to each other as if they feared to speak aloud--as if some impalpable and invisible horror were hovering round them.