of some new misfortune. I hastened back to Venice. The podesta received
me kindly; but when I inquired after Maria, he seemed to me to become
grave, as he told me she had gone to Padua on a short visit. During
supper I fell into a swoon, followed by a violent fever in which I had
visions of Maria dead, laid out before an altar. Then it was Lara I saw
on the bier, and I loudly called her by name. Then everything became
bright; a hand passed softly over my head. I awoke, and found Maria and
her aunt by my bedside.

"Lara, Maria, hear me!" I cried. "It is no dream. You have heard my
voice at Paestum. You know it again! I feel it. I love you; I have always
loved you!"

"I have loved you, too," she said, kneeling by my side and seizing my
hand. "I have loved you from the day when the sun burnt your kiss into
my forehead--loved you with the intuition of the blind!"

I then learnt that Maria--my Lara--had been cured of her blindness by a
great specialist in Naples, the podesta's brother, who, touched by her
beauty and purity, had her educated, and adopted her as his own child.
On his death his sister took her to Venice, where she found a new home
in the podesta's palace.

* * * * *

APULEIUS

The Golden Ass

Apuleius was born about 125 A.D., at Madaura, in Africa.
After studying at Athens, he practised as an advocate at Rome,
and then wandered about Northern Africa, lecturing on
philosophy and rhetoric. At Tripoli he was charged with having
won by witchcraft the love of a rich widow who had left him
her wealth. But he was acquitted after delivering an
interesting defence, included among his extant works. He then
settled in Carthage, where he died at an advanced age. Poor
Apuleius! His good fame was darkened by the success of an
amusing romance, "The Golden Ass," which he wrote, by way of
recreation, at Rome. He related the story of the adventures
which befell a young Greek nobleman who, by an extreme
curiosity in regard to witchcraft, got changed into a donkey.
It was an age of wild superstition and foolish credulity; and
his readers confused the author of "The Golden Ass" with the
hero of it. Apuleius was credited with a series of impossible
exploits, which he had not even invented. For his work is
merely a Latin adaptation of a lost Greek romance by Lucius of
Patras. But Apuleius des