ng
their grief in the most absurd gesticulations; and then the two
Capuzzis, howling and crying in despair. And in truth, all they who
were spectators of this strangest of dramatic representations,
notwithstanding the irrepressible laughter into which they could not
help breaking over the extraordinary old man, were penetrated by a deep
and eerie shudder of awe.

The stage now suddenly grew dark. There was thunder and lightning; and
out of the depths arose a pale and spectral form, exactly alike in
every feature to Capuzzi's brother, Pietro, father of Marianna, who
died in Senegaglia.

"Wicked Pasquale!" cried the spectre-form, in hollow, terrible tones;
"what have you done with my daughter? Despair and die, accursed
murderer of my child! Your reward awaits you in hell!"

The Capuzzi on the stage fell down as if struck by lightning, and at
the same instant the Capuzzi down beneath fell senseless from his seat.
The branches rustling, closed into their former places; and the stage,
with Marianna and Capuzzi, and Pietro's grizzly ghost, disappeared from
view. Signor Pasquale was in such a deep faint that it cost some
trouble to bring him to himself again.

At last he revived, with a deep sigh, stretched his hands out before
him as if to keep off the terror which seized upon him, and cried in
hollow tones: "Let me go, Pietro!" A stream of tears burst from his
eyes, and he cried, with sobs: "Ah, Marianna!--my darling beautiful
girl!--my own Marianna!"

"Bethink you!" said Cavalcanti at last. "Consider Signor Pasquale! It
was only on the stage that you saw your niece dead. She is alive. She
is here, to implore your forgiveness for the thoughtless stratagem to
which love--and, perhaps, your own inconsiderate conduct--impelled
her."

Here Marianna, with Antonio Scacciati behind her, rushed forward from
the back of the hall, and fell at the feet of the old gentleman, who
had been placed in an easy chair. Marianna, in the fullest lustre of
her beauty, kissed his hands, bedewed them with hot tears, and begged
forgiveness for herself and Antonio, united to her by the Church's
benediction. From the old man's deathly pale face flames suddenly
broke, fury flashed from his eyes, and he cried in a half-articulate
voice: "Ha! abandoned wretch!--venomous serpent! whom I nourished in my
bosom, for my destruction!" But the grave old Torricelli came up to
him, in all his dignity, and said that he (Capuzzi) had seen in a
figure the f