holy water over corpse and coffin, tracing the
sign of the cross with his brush. No sooner had the blessed
shower touched my Clarimonde than her fair body crumbled
into dust, and became nought but a hideous mixture of ashes
and half-burnt bones. "There, Signor Romuald," said the
inexorable priest, pointing to the remains, "there is your
mistress. Are you still tempted to escort her to the Lido or
to Fusina?" I bowed my head; a mighty ruin had taken place
within me. I returned to my parsonage, and Il Signor
Romualdo, the lover of Clarimonde, said farewell for ever to
the poor priest whose strange companion he had been so long.
Only the next night I again saw Clarimonde. She said to me,
as at first in the church porch, "Poor wretch, what have you
done? Why did you listen to that frantic priest? Were you
not happy? And what harm had I done you that you should
violate my grave, and shamefully expose the misery of my
nothingness? Henceforward all communication between us, soul
and body, is broken. Farewell, you will regret me." She
vanished in the air like a vapour, and I saw her no more.

Alas! she spoke too truly. I have regretted her again and
again. I regret her still. The repose of my soul has indeed
been dearly bought, and the love of God itself has not been
too much to replace the gap left by hers. This, my brother,
is the history of my youth. Never look at woman, and let
your eyes as you walk be fixed upon the ground; for, pure
and calm as you may be, a single moment is sufficient to
make you lose your eternal peace.

[Sidenote: Criticism thereof.]

Now, though to see a thing in translation be always to see it "as in a
glass darkly"; and though in this case the glass may be unduly flawed
and clouded, my own critical faculties must not only now be
unusually[199] enfeebled by age, but must always have been crippled by
some strange affection, if certain things are not visible here to any
intelligent and impartial reader. The story, of course, is not pure
invention; several versions of parts, if not the whole, of it will occur
to any one who has some knowledge of literature; and I have recently
read a variant of great beauty and "eeriness" from the Japanese.[200]
But the merit of a story depends, not on its originality as matter, but
on the manner in which it is told. It surely cannot be d