of seeing them,'
cried the boy; so bursting away, he dashed into the thick of the
assembled throng. It was not without a heartfelt sense of shame that the
poor friar found himself obliged to follow his charge, whom he now began
to fear might be lost to him.

'Per Bacco! cried one of the crowd, 'here's a Frate can't resist the
charms of profane melody, and is elbowing his way, like any sinner,
among us.'

'It's the cachuca he wants to see,' exclaimed another; 'come, Marietta,
here's a connoisseur worth showing your pretty ankles to.'

'By the holy rosary!' cried a third, 'she is determined on the
conquest.'

This outburst was caused by the sudden appearance of a young girl, who,
though scarcely more than a child, bore in her assured look and flashing
eyes all the appearances of more advanced years. She was a deep brunette
in complexion, to which the scarlet cloth that hung from her black hair
gave additional brilliancy. Her jupe, of the same colour, recrossed and
interlaced with tawdry gold tinsel, came only to the knee, below which
appeared limbs that many a Roman statuary had modelled, so perfect were
they in every detail of symmetry and beauty. Her whole air was redolent
of that _beaute du diable_, as the French happily express it, which
seems never to appeal in vain to the sympathies of the populace. It
was girlhood, almost childlike girlhood, but dashed with a conscious
effrontery that had braved many a libertine stare--many a look
significant in coarseness.

With one wild spring she bounded into the open space, and there she
stood now on tiptoe, her arms extended straight above her head, while
with clasped hands she remained motionless, so that every line and
lineament of her faultless figure might be surveyed in unbroken
symmetry.

'Ah carina--che bellezza! come e graziosa!' broke from those who,
corrupt, debased, and degraded in a hundred ways as they were, yet
inherited that ancient love of symmetry in form which the games and the
statues of antique Rome had fostered. With a graceful ease no ballarina
of the grand opera could have surpassed, she glided into those slow and
sliding movements which precede the dance--movements meant to display
the graces of form, without the intervention of action. Gradually,
however, the time of the music grew quicker, and now her heightened
colour and more flashing eye bespoke how her mind lent itself to the
measure. The dance was intended to represent the coy retirings