over the Monk and
drowned him in a torrent of very filthy liquid. Each sister followed
suit and did the like; then one after the other they re-entered the tomb
of San Satiro, slipping in through a tiny crack in the lid, leaving
their victim lying full length in a stream of a most intolerable stench.

When the last had disappeared,--the cock crew. Then Fra Mino at last
found himself able to rise from the earth. Broken with fatigue and pain,
benumbed with cold, shuddering with fever, half stifled with the foul
exhalations of the poisonous liquor, he set his clothing straight and
dragged himself to his cell, just as day broke.

From that night on, Fra Mino never had a moment's peace. The
recollection of what he had seen in the Chapel of San Michele, above San
Satiro's tomb, disturbed him in the Church services and in all his pious
exercises. He trembled when he visited the Church along with his
fellows; and as his turn came, according to the rule, to kiss the
pavement of the Choir, his lips shuddered to encounter the traces of the
nymphs' presence, and he would murmur: "O! my Saviour, dost not Thou
hear me say what Thou didst Thyself say to Thy Father, Lead us not, we
beseech Thee, into temptation?" At first he had thought of sending to
the Lord Bishop an account of what he had witnessed. But on riper
reflexion, he became convinced it were better to meditate at leisure on
these extraordinary events and only divulge them after a more exhaustive
study of all the circumstances. Besides it so happened that the Lord
Bishop, allied with the Guelphs of Pisa against the Ghibellines of
Florence, was at that moment waging war with such right good will that
for a whole month he had not so much as unbuckled his cuirass. And that
is why, without saying a word to anyone, Fra Mino made profound
researches on the tomb of San Satiro and the Chapel containing it.
Deeply versed in the knowledge of books, he investigated many texts,
both ancient and modern; yet found no glimmer of enlightenment in any of
them. Indeed the only effect of the works on Magic which he studied was
to double his uncertainty.

One morning, after labouring all the night as was his wont, he was fain
to refresh his heart with a walk in the fields. He took the hilly path
which, winding between the vines and the elms they are wedded to, leads
to a wood of myrtles and olives, sacred in old days to the Roman gods.
His feet bathed in the wet grass, his brow refreshed by t