'Come in, man-come in! Why stand you there amazed and dumb? We are hospitable revellers, and give all men welcome.'

Adrian heard so much, but no more. He withdrew himself and proceeded to search the remainder of the convent. In a secluded chapel he found a nun engaged in prayer. From her he demanded tidings of Irene, for such was the name of her he sought. After some hesitation the nun replied:

The maiden thou speakest of died not with the general death. In the dispersion of the few remaining, she left the convent-I know not whither; but she had friends in Florence-their names I cannot tell thee.'

'Now, bless thee, holy sister! bless thee! How long since she left the convent?'

Four days have passed since the robbers have seized the house of Santa Maria,' replied the nun, groaning: 'and they were quick successors to the sisterhood.'

Four days!-and thou canst give me no clue?'

'None-yet stay, young man!'-and the nun, approaching, lowered her voice to a hissing whisper-'Ask the Becchini.

Adrian started aside, crossed himself hastily, and quitted the convent without answer. He returned to his horse, and rode back into the silenced heart of the city. Tavern and hotel there were no more; but the palaces of dead princes were free to the living stranger. He entered one-a spacious and splendid mansion. In the stables he found forage still in the manger; but the horses, at the time in the Italian cities a

According to the usual custom of Florence, the dead were borne to their resting-place on biers, supported by citizens of equal rank; but a new trade was created by the plague, and men of the lowest dregs of the populace, bribed by immense payment, discharged the office of transporting the remains of the victims. These were called Becchini.

proof of rank as well as wealth, were gone with the hands that fed them. The high-born knight assumed the office of groom, took off the heavy harness, fastened his steed to the rack, and as the wearied animal, unconscious of the surrounding horrors, fell eagerly upon its meal, its young lord turned away, and muttered, 'Faithful servant, and sole companion! may the pestilence that spareth neither beast nor man, spare thee! and may'st thou bear me hence with a lighter heart!'

A spacious hall, hung with arms and banners-a wide flight of marble stairs, whose walls were painted in the stiff outlines and gorgeous colours of the day, conducted to vast chambers, hung with velvets and cloth of gold, but silent as the tomb. He threw himself upon the cushions which were piled in the centre of the room, for he had ridden far that morning, and for many days before, and he was wearied and exhausted, body and limb; but he could not rest. Impatience, anxiety, hope, and fear, gnawed his heart and fevered his veins, and, after a brief and unsatisfactory attempt to sober his own thoughts, and devise some plan of search more certain than that which chance might afford him, he rose, and traversed the apartments, in the unacknowledged hope which chance alone could suggest.

It was easy to see that he had made his resting-place in the home of one of the princes of the land; and the splendour of all around him far outshone the barbarous and rude magnificence of the less civilised and wealthy Romans. Here, lay the lute as last touched-the gilded and illumined volume as last conned; there, were seats drawn familiarly together, as when lady and gallant had interchanged whispers last. And such,' thought Adrian,-' such desolation may soon swallow up the vestige of the unwelcomed guest, as of the vanished lord!'

At length he entered a saloon, in which was a table still spread with wine-flasks, goblets of glass, and one of silver, withered flowers, half-mouldy fruits, and viands. At one side the arras, folding-doors opened to a broad flight of stairs, that descended to a little garden at the back of the house, in which a fountain still played sparkling and livingly the only thing, save the stranger, living there! On the steps lay a crimson mantle, and by it a lady's glove. The relics seemed to speak to the lover's heart of a lover's last wooing and last farewell. He groaned aloud, and feeling he should have need of all his strength, filled one of the goblets from a half-emptied flask of Cyprus wine. He drained the draught-it revived him. 'Now,' he said, 'once more to my task!-I will sally forth,' when suddenly he heard heavy steps along the rooms he had quitted—they approached-they entered; and Adrian beheld two huge and ill-omened forms stalk into the chamber. They were wrapped in black homely draperies, their arms were bare, and they wore large shapeless masks, which descended to the breast, leaving only access to sight and breath in three small circular apertures. The knight half drew his sword, for the forms and aspects of these visitors were not such as men think to look upon in safety.

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'Oh!' said one, 'the palace has a Fear guest to-day. us not, stranger; there is room,—ay, and wealth enough for all men now in Florence! Per Bacco! but there is still one goblet of silver left-how comes that?' So saying. the man seized the cup which Adrian had just drained, and thrust it into his breast. He then turned to Adrian, whose hand was still upon his hilt, and said, with a laugh which came choked and muffled through his vizard— 'Oh, we cut no throats, Signor; the plague does all that for us. We are honest men, even if we are Becchini.'

Adrian started at the fatal name. Yet these were the men who could help him if she whom he sought had fallen a victim to the plague. He bribed them with a large sum of gold to aid him in his search, and they departed well pleased."

The narrative then proceeds to tell of Adrian's fruitless search. At last he is stricken down, but not by the plague, but by his carelessness in exposing himself to the merciless summer heat. He is discovered by Irene, who carefully tends him. The narrative continues:

"For three days, the fatal three days, did Adrian remain bereft of strength and sense. But he was not smitten by the scourge which his devoted and generous nurse had anticipated. It was a fierce and dangerous fever, brought on by the great fatigue, restlessness, and terrible agitation he had undergone.

No professional mediciner could be found to attend him; but a good friar, better perhaps skilled in the healing art than many who claimed its monopoly, visited him daily. And in the long and frequent absences to which his other and numerous duties compelled the monk, there was one ever at hand to smooth the pillow, to wipe the brow, to listen to the moan, to watch the sleep. And even in that dismal office, when, in the frenzy of the sufferer, her name, coupled with terms of passionate endearment, broke from his lips, a thrill of strange pleasure crossed the heart of the betrothed, which she chid as if it were a crime. But even the most unearthly love is selfish in the rapture of being loved! Words cannot tell, heart cannot divine, the mingled emotions that broke over her when, in some of those incoherent ravings, she dimly understood that for her the city had been sought, the death dared, the danger incurred. And as then bending passionately to kiss that burning brow, her tears fell fast over the idol of her youth, the fountains from which they gushed were those, fathom

less and countless, which a life could not weep away. Not an impulse of the human and the woman heart that was not stirred; the adoring gratitude, the meek wonder thus to be loved, while deeming it so simple a merit thus to love;—as if all sacrifice in her were a thing of course,-to her, a virtue nature could not paragon, words could not repay! And there he lay, the victim to his own fearless faith, helpless-dependent upon her-a thing between life and death, to thank, to serve to be proud of, yet protect, to compassionate, yet revere the saver, to be saved! Never seemed one object to demand at once from a single heart so many and so profound emotions; the romantic enthusiasm of the girl—the fond idolatry of the bride-the watchful providence of the mother over the child.

And strange to say, with all the excitement of that lonely watch, scarcely stirring from his side, taking food only that her strength might not fail her. unable to close her eyes,-though, from the same cause, she would fain have taken rest, when slumber fell upon her charge-with all such wear and tear of frame and heart, she seemed wonderfully supported. And the holy man marvelled, in each visit, to see the cheek of the nurse still fresh, and her eye still bright. In her own superstition, she thought and felt that Heaven gifted her with a preternatural power to be true to so sacred a charge; and in this fancy she did not wholly err:-for Heaven did gift her with that divine power, when it planted in so soft a heart the enduring might and energy of Affection! The friar had visited the sick man late on the third night, and administered to him a strong sedative. This night,' said he to Irene, 'will be the crisis: should he awaken, as I trust he may, with a returning consciousness and a calm pulse, he will live; if not, young daughter, prepare for the worst. But should you note any turn in the disease, that may excite

alarm, or require my attendance, this scroll will inform you where I am, it God spare me still, at each hour of the night and morning.'

The monk retired, and Irene resumed her watch.

The sleep of Adrian was at first broken and interrupted-his features, his exclamations, his gestures, all evinced great agony, whether mental or bodily: it seemed, as perhaps it was, a fierce and doubtful struggle between life and death for the conquest of the sleeper. Patient, silent, breathing but by long-drawn gasps, Irene sat at the bed-head. The lamp was removed to the farther end of the chamber, and its ray, shaded by the draperies, did not suffice to give to her gaze more than the outline of the countenance she watched. In that awful suspense, all the thoughts that hitherto had stirred her mind lay hushed and mute. She was only sensible to that unutterable fear which few of us have been happy enough not to know. That crushing weight under which we can scarcely breathe or move, the avalanche over us, freezing and suspended, which we cannot escape from, beneath which, every moment, we may be buried and overwhelmed. The whole destiny of life was in the chances of that single night! It was just as Adrian at last seemed to glide into a deeper and serener slumber, that the bells of the death-cart broke with their boding knell the palpable silence of the streets. Now hushed, now revived, as the cart stopped for its gloomy passengers, and coming nearer and nearer after every pause. At length she heard the heavy wheels stop under the very casement, and a voice deep and muffled calling aloud, 'Bring out the dead!' She rose, and with a noiseless step, passed to secure the door, when the dull lamp gleamed upon the dark and shrouded forms of the Becchini.

'You have not marked the door, nor set out the body,' said one gruffly;

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Hush, he sleeps-away, quick, it is not the plague that seized him.'

'Not the plague?' growled the Becchino in a disappointed tone; 'I thought no other illness dare encroach upon the rights of the gavocciolo!'

'Go-here's money; leave us.'

And the grisly carrier sullenly withdrew. The cart moved on, the bell renewed its summons, till slowly and faintly the dreadful larum died in the distance."

Irene is withdrawn from him before he perfectly recovers, and when he does so, he resumes his search. He is visited by the Becchino whom he had employed to❘ aid him, and this man informs him that Irene is dead. He leads him to the place where those who had died of the plague had been interred.

"The grave digger now led the way through one of the gates a little out of the city. And here, under a shed, sat six of his ghastly and ill-omened brethren, with spades and pickaxes at their feet.

His guide now turned round to Adrian, whose face was set, and resolute in despair.

'Fair Signor,' said he, with some touch of lingering compassion, 'wouldst thou really convince thine own eyes and heart? the sight may appal, the contagion may destroy, thee,-if indeed, as it seems to me, Death has not already written "mine" upon thee.'

'Raven of bode and woe!' answered Adrian, 'seest thou not that all I shrink from is thy voice and aspect? Show me her I seek, living or dead.'

'I will show her to you, then,' said the Becchino, sullenly; such as two nights since she was committed to my charge. I have left that upon her by which you will know the Becchino is no liar. Bring hither the torches, comrades, and lift the door. Never stare; it's the gentleman's whim, and he'll pay it well.'

Turning to the right, while Adrian

spectacle whose dire philosophy crushes as with a wheel all the pride of mortal the spectacle of that vault in which earth hides all that on earth flourished, rejoiced, exalted-awaited his eye!

The Becchini lifted a ponderous grate, lowered their torches (scarcely needed, for through the aperture rushed, with a hideous glare, the light of the burning sun), and motioned to Adrian to advance. He stood upon the summit of the abyss and gazed below.

It was a large deep and circular space, like the bottom of an exhausted well. In niches cut into the walls of earth around, lay, duly coffined, those who had been the earliest victims of the plague, when the Becchino's market was not yet glutted, and priest followed, and friend mourned the dead. But on the floor below, there was the loathsome horror! Huddled and matted together - some naked, some in shrouds already black and rotten-lay the later guests, the unshriven and unblest! There was the infant, still on the mother's breast; there was the lover, stretched across the dainty limbs of his adored! There, too, the wild satire of the grave-diggers had cast. though stripped of their gold and jewels, the emblems that spoke of departed rank;- the broken wand of the Councillor; the General's baton; the Priestly Mitre ! The foul and livid exhalation gathered like flesh itself, fungous and putrid, upon the walls, and the

But who shall detail the ineffable and unimaginable horrors that reigned over the Palace where the Great King received the prisoners whom the sword of the Pestilence had subdued?

Adrian here recognised the peculiar robe which he believed Irene had worn.

The description in the text is borrowed from the famous waxwork model [of the interior of the Charnel-house] at Florence.

He saw no more-he fell back in the arms of the grave-diggers; when he recovered he was still without the gates of Florence-reclined upon a green mound -his guide stood beside him-holding his steed by the bridle as it grazed patiently on the neglected grass. The other brethren of the axe had resumed their seat under the shed."

As it afterwards turned out, the young nobleman was mistaken. It was no she whom he sought that the plague had struck. But the future history of the two does not concern us. Sufficient if we have given our readers some conception of what was passing in the old city of Florence in the terrible summer of 1348.

days, when every one has been everywhere (to speak in a general way), we may assume that our reader has been in Switzerland; that he has visited Lucerne, sailed on its charming lake, and visited, or at least seen from a distance, Tell's chapel. We may also assume that he knows the main incidents in that world-famous story of the apple set on the head of Tell's son, and of how Tell shot it off without hurting the child.

We do not then know if our reader, supposing him to be one who (we beg his pardon for the supposition) does not read the works of what we have elsewhere called the new school of historical criticism, will be shocked at perusing the following quotation which we make from S. Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages":

"I suppose that most people regard the story of Tell and the apple as an historical event; and with corresponding interest, when they undertake the regular Swiss round, visit the marketplace of Altorf, where is pointed out the site of the lime-tree to which Tell's child

Mr. Gould's argument is to the effect that an apple story, in all essential particulars the same as that of Tell, is found in countries so remote as Persia, Iceland, and Denmark. This, Mr. Gould considers, proves that the story is not history, "but is rather one of the numerous household myths common to the whole stock of Aryan nations." We must confess that this seems to us a most extraordinary argument, and indeed to be of very little value. In a time when skill in shooting with the bow was of the utmost importance, we can easily imagine a set of circumstances arising such as are narrated in the famous story. We think we can prove this very well by an almost parallel case. In Dr. Livingstone's life there is no incident

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