His opinions were strange. He believed in the sentience of all vegetable things, and, in a bolder form, he believed that the grey stones of his house, the fungi which overspread them, and the decayed trees around had together moulded the destinies of his family and made him what I now saw him. Our books were in keeping with this character: we pored together over the Ververt of Gresset, the Belphegor of Machiavelli, the Subterranean Voyage of Holberg, and a small octavo manual of a forgotten church, the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae. I could not help thinking of that last volume when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he spoke of his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building.