ife--my betrothed bride, and beside her sat the Duchess di
Marina, the most irreproachable of matrons, famous for her piety not
only in Naples but throughout Italy. So immaculate was she that it was
difficult to imagine her husband daring to caress that upright,
well-dressed form, or venturing to kiss those prim lips, colder than
the carven beads of her jeweled rosary. Yet there was a story about her
too--an old story that came from Padua--of how a young and handsome
nobleman had been found dead at her palace doors, stabbed to the heart.
Perhaps--who knows--he also might have thought--

"Che bella cosa e de morire accisa,
Nnanze a la porta de la nnamorata!"

Some said the duke had killed him; but nothing could be proved, nothing
was certain. The duke was silent, so was is duchess; and Scandal
herself sat meekly with closed lips in the presence of this stately and
august couple, whose bearing toward each other in society was a lesson
of complete etiquette to the world. What went on behind the scenes no
one could tell. I raised my hat with the profoundest deference as the
carriage containing the two ladies dashed by; I knew not which was the
cleverest hypocrite of the two, therefore I did equal honor to both. I
was in a meditative and retrospective mood, and when I reached the
Toledo the distracting noises, the cries of the flower-girls, and
venders of chestnuts and confetti, the nasal singing of the
street-rhymers, the yells of punchinello, and the answering laughter of
the populace, were all beyond my endurance. To gratify a sudden whim
that seized me, I made my way into the lowest and dirtiest quarters of
the city, and roamed through wretched courts and crowded alleys, trying
to discover that one miserable street which until now I had always
avoided even the thought of, where I had purchased the coral-fisher's
clothes on the day of my return from the grave. I went in many wrong
directions, but at last I found it, and saw at a glance that the old
rag-dealer's shop was still there, in its former condition of
heterogeneous filth and disorder. A man sat at the door smoking, but
not the crabbed and bent figure I had before seen--this was a younger
and stouter individual, with a Jewish cast of countenance, and dark,
ferocious eyes. I approached him, and seeing by my dress and manner
that I was some person of consequence, he rose, drew his pipe from his
mouth, and raised his greasy cap with a respectful yet suspicious