nna, and taken her through the
audience to a side door, where the Vetturino was waiting with the
carriage; and away they were driven towards Florence as fast as they
could go.

"Marianna!" the old man continued crying. "She has gone!--she has
flown!--the villain Antonio has robbed me of her! Away!--after her!
Good people, have pity! Get torches; search for my dove! Ha, the
serpent!"

And the old man was making off; but the officer held him fast, saying:
"If you mean the pretty young girl who was sitting by you, I rather
fancy I saw her slip out with a young fellow--Antonio Scacciati, I
believe,--some considerable time ago, just as you were beginning that
useless, silly quarrel with the actor who had on a mask something like
you. Signor Pasquale, it is my duty to arrest you, on account of your
behaviour, and the murderous attack upon the actor."

Signor Pasquale, with pale death in his face, incapable of uttering a
word or a sound, was marched off by the very Sbirri who had come there
to protect him from masquerading demons and spectres. Thus there fell
upon him deep distress and sorrow, and all the wild despair of a
foolish and deceived old amorous fool, on the very night when he looked
to celebrate his greatest triumph.

Salvator Rosa Quits Rome For Florence. The End Of This Story.

All things here below under the sun are subject to constant change and
fluctuation, but there is nothing that more deserves to be called
fickle and fleeting than mankind's opinions, which keep rotating in an
eternal circle, like Fortune's wheel. Bitter censure falls to-day upon
him who yesterday gathered a grand harvest of praise; he who walks
to-day a-foot may to-morrow ride in a gilded chariot.

Who was there in all Rome who did not scorn and mock at old Capuzzi,
with his mean avarice, his silly amorousness, his crazy jealousy?--or
who did not wish the poor tormented Marianna her freedom? Yet now that
Antonio had succeeded in carrying her off, all the scorn and mockery
suddenly turned to pity for the poor old fellow who was seen creeping
about the streets of Rome, with bowed head, inconsolable.

Misfortunes rarely come singly. Soon after Marianna had been carried
off, Pasquale lost his dearest bosom friends. Little Pitichinaccio
choked himself with an almond, which he incautiously tried to swallow
as he was in the middle of a _cadenza_; and a slip of the pen (of
his own making) put a sudden period to the life of the renown