il, and helped his Annunziata--hanging her head, with closed
eyes, over her breast, like a wounded dove--up the stairway, into the
inner chamber.

"'Meanwhile a strange sight was seen by those of the crowd who had
crushed into the inner court of the palace. The young man (who was
supposed to be dead) was about to be carried away, when an old, hideous
beggar-woman, in rags, came hobbling up with loud outcries of sorrow,
elbowed a passage for herself through the thickest of the crowd, and,
on reaching the young man, who was lying insensible, cried--

"'"Let him alone, you fools! let him alone! He is not dead." She
cowered down, took his head into her lap, and stroked his brow, calling
him by the fondest names.

"At sight of the horrible, hideous face of the old hag bending over the
beautiful features of the young man, which seemed to be petrified in
death (whereas a repulsive muscular twitching played over hers); her
dirty rags fluttering above the handsome dress which he had on; her
withered, brown-yellow arms trembling about his brow and his bared
bosom, everyone thrilled with an inward horror. It seemed as though he
was lying in the arms of the grinning form of Death itself. The people
who were standing round crept, one by one, away, and but a very few
were left when at length he opened his eyes with a deep sigh. At the
old woman's request they carried him to the Grand Canal, where he was
placed in a gondola, and, with the old woman, conveyed across the water
to the house which she indicated as his dwelling.

"'I need not explain to you that the young man was Antonio, and the old
woman the beggar who said she was his old nurse.

"'When he had come to his senses, and saw by his bedside the old woman
(who had given him some strengthening drops), he said--after fixing for
a long while a melancholy gaze upon her--in a hollow voice, sustained
with difficulty:

"'"You are with me, Margareta! That is well. Where should I find a
more faithful nurse? Oh! forgive me, mother, that I--a weak, foolish
boy--should have doubted, even for a moment, what you revealed to me.
Yes, yes! you _are_ that Margareta who nursed me. I always knew that it
was so. But the Devil confused my thoughts. I have seen _her_--it was
she--it was she! I told you that there was some dark spell within me,
controlling me in a manner that I could not comprehend. It has come
gleaming out of the darkness now, with noonday brilliance, to
annihilate me, in n