Melmoth The Wanderer, Volume 4 by Charles Maturin

Loud tolled the bell, the priests prayed well, The tapers they all burned bright, The monk her son, and her daughter the nun, They told their beads all night! The second night The monk and the nun they told their beads As fast as they could tell, And aye the louder grew the noise, The faster went the bell! The third night came The monk and the nun forgot their beads, They fell to the ground dismayed, There was not a single saint in heaven Whom they did not call to their aid! SOUTHEY.

Moncada here concluded the tale of the Indian, -- the victim of Melmoth's passion, no less than of his destiny, both alike unhallowed and unutterable. And he announced his intention of disclosing to him the fates of the other victims, whose skeletons were preserved in the vault of the Jew Adonijah in Madrid. He added, that the circumstances relating to them, were of a character still darker and more awful than those he had recited, as they were the result of impressions made on masculine minds, without any excitement but that of looking into futurity. He mentioned, too, that the circumstances of his residence in the house of the Jew, his escape from it, and the reasons of his subsequent arrival in Ireland, were scarcely less extraordinary than any thing he had hitherto related.