erve, than to have her Banns forbid, by the intrigues of the curate
of the parish who published them--

He was going on, when Maria, who had made a short pause, put the pipe to
her mouth, and began the air again--they were the same notes;--yet were
ten times sweeter: It is the evening service to the Virgin, said the
young man--but who has taught her to play it--or how she came by her
pipe, no one knows; we think that heaven has assisted her in both;
for ever since she has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only
consolation--she has never once had the pipe out of her hand, but plays
that service upon it almost night and day.

The postillion delivered this with so much discretion and natural
eloquence, that I could not help decyphering something in his face above
his condition, and should have sifted out his history, had not poor
Maria taken such full possession of me.

We had got up by this time almost to the bank where Maria was sitting:
she was in a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but two tresses,
drawn up into a silk-net, with a few olive leaves twisted a little
fantastically on one side--she was beautiful; and if ever I felt the
full force of an honest heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her--

--God help her! poor damsel! above a hundred masses, said the
postillion, have been said in the several parish churches and convents
around, for her,--but without effect; we have still hopes, as she is
sensible for short intervals, that the Virgin at last will restore her
to herself; but her parents, who know her best, are hopeless upon that
score, and think her senses are lost for ever.

As the postillion spoke this, Maria made a cadence so melancholy, so
tender and querulous, that I sprung out of the chaise to help her, and
found myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before I relapsed from my
enthusiasm.

Maria look'd wistfully for some time at me, and then at her goat--and
then at me--and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately--

--Well, Maria, said I softly--What resemblance do you find?

I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the
humblest conviction of what a Beast man is,--that I asked the question;
and that I would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the
venerable presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever
Rabelais scatter'd--and yet I own my heart smote me, and that I so
smarted at the very idea of it, that I swore I would set up for W