city.
Towards morning the tempest lulled, and in the intervals of the wind,
strange sounds were heard, like the rushing of horses and rattling of
carriages. At length the sounds grew so loud that curiosity could be
restrained no longer, and the crowd gathered towards the entrance of the
_Piazza_. The night was dark beyond description, and the first knowledge
of the hazard that they were incurring was communicated to the shivering
mob by the kicks of several platoons of French soldiery, who let them
pass within their lines, but prohibited escape. The square was filled
with cavalry, escorting wagons loaded with the archives, plate, and
pictures, of the government. The old podesta was seen entering a
carriage, into which his very handsome daughter, the betrothed of the
proudest of the proud Venetian senators, was handed by the stranger. The
procession then moved, and last, and most surprising of all, the
stranger, mounting a charger, put himself at the head of the cavalry,
and, making a profound adieu to the new governor, who stood shivering at
the window in care of a file of grenadiers, dashed forward on the road
to Milan.

Day rose, and the multitude rushed out to see what was become of the
city. Every thing was as it had been, but the column of the lion: its
famous emblem of the Venetian republic was gone, wings and all. They
exclaimed that the world had come to an end. But the wheel of fortune is
round, let politicians say what they will. In twelve months from that
day the old podesta was again sitting in the government-house--yet a
podesta no more, but a French prefect; the Signora Maria, his lovely
daughter, was sitting beside him, with an infant, the image of her own
beauty, and beside her the stranger, no longer the man of magic in the
scarlet cloak and green and vermilion striped cap with a topaz clasp,
but a French general of division, in blue and silver, her husband, as
handsome as ever, and, if not altogether a professed _Diavolo_, quite as
successful in finding money whenever he wanted it. His first _entree_
into Vicenza had been a little theatrical, for such is the genius of his
country. The blowing-up of his little steam-boat, which had nearly
furnished his drama with a tragic catastrophe, added to its effect; and
his discovery of the sequins was managed by three of his countrymen. As
an inquirer into the nakedness of the land, he might have been shot as a
spy. As half-charlatan and half-madman, he was sure