Chapter 3

And the strange thing was that Lemony Snicket in fact was not dead at all. Cold-yes, lonely-yes, hiding from a pack of sinister-looking barber shop owners-yes, but very much alive. He was the current resident of a very damp but nevertheless empty catacomb, more than a mile underneath the church of St. Francis. Lemony's few friends who either attended, worked, or lived at St. Francis had tried to make the place comfortable for him by adding a small couch, a record player, and a collection of Tennyson's poems. However, spending one's time typing on a most unreliable typewriter in a place that was used to hold the deceased, while presumed to be deceased yourself for that matter, isn't easily made comfortable.

Furthermore, Lemony didn't enjoy Tennyson's poetry. He had once read a poem by Tennyson that involved a lady and a mirror and the final stanza had saddened him each time he read it. So, as Lemony typed gloomily on his gloomy typewriter in his gloomy surroundings, you can imagine how he felt a few hours previous when section of The Daily Punctilio(along with a loaf of raisin bread)was lowered down through the bars above. That newspaper clipping had looked Lemony squarely in the eye and told him he was dead; when he clearly knew that he was not. But then again, typed Lemony, there's really no point in arguing with newspaper. He sighed, and wondered how many people he had known who were presumed dead and were really alive. He also thought about all the people who were presumed alive when they were really dead-his guinea pigs, for instance. And Lemony thought of Beatrice, and where she was and what she was doing. He thought of the day they had first met, and of all the misfortunes that seemed to follow them since. He also thought of how nice it would be if Brother Bernardo could send him down some jam for his raisin bread.