twelve
o'clock
`` You behold around you , '' said the muffled stranger , waving his arm toward the ruins , `` all that remains of a sanctuary once the most celebrated in Sicily for the piety and wisdom of its inmates . But a horrible crime , a murder perpetrated under circumstances unusually diabolical , the criminal being no less a person than the last lord abbot himself , and the victim a beauteous girl whom he had seduced , rendered this institution accursed in the eyes of God and man . The monks abandoned it : and the waste over which you have passed is now the unclaimed but once fertile estate belonging to the abbey . The superstition of the Sicilians has not failed to invent terrific tales in connection with these ruins : and the belief that each night at twelve o'clock the soul of the guilty abbot is driven by the scourge of the demon through the scene alike of his episcopal power and his black turpitude , effectually prevents impertinent or inconvenient intrusion . '' The observation with which the muffled stranger concluded his brief narrative , convinced Wagner that it was amongst those ruins the brethren of the Rosy Cross had fixed their secret abode . But he had no time for reflection , inasmuch as his guide hurried him on amidst the tombs , on which the light of the silver moon now streamed with a power and an effect that no dark cloud for the time impaired . Stopping at the base of one of the most splendid monuments in the cemetery , the muffled stranger touched some secret spring , and a large marble block immediately opened like a door , the aperture revealing a narrow flight of stone steps .