he nun, approaching, lowered her
voice to a hissing whisper--"Ask the Becchini." (According to the usual
custom of Florence, the dead were borne to their resting-place on biers,
supported by citizens of equal rank; but a new trade was created by the
plague, and men of the lowest dregs of the populace, bribed by immense
payment, discharged the office of transporting the remains of the
victims. These were called Becchini.)

Adrian started aside, crossed himself hastily, and quitted the convent
without answer. He returned to his horse, and rode back into the
silenced heart of the city. Tavern and hotel there were no more; but
the palaces of dead princes were free to the living stranger. He entered
one--a spacious and splendid mansion. In the stables he found forage
still in the manger; but the horses, at that time in the Italian cities
a proof of rank as well as wealth, were gone with the hands that fed
them. The highborn Knight assumed the office of groom, took off the
heavy harness, fastened his steed to the rack, and as the wearied
animal, unconscious of the surrounding horrors, fell eagerly upon its
meal, its young lord turned away, and muttered, "Faithful servant, and
sole companion! may the pestilence that spareth neither beast nor man,
spare thee! and mayst thou bear me hence with a lighter heart!"

A spacious hall, hung with arms and banners--a wide flight of marble
stairs, whose walls were painted in the stiff outlines and gorgeous
colours of the day, conducted to vast chambers, hung with velvets
and cloth of gold, but silent as the tomb. He threw himself upon the
cushions which were piled in the centre of the room, for he had ridden
far that morning, and for many days before, and he was wearied and
exhausted, body and limb; but he could not rest. Impatience, anxiety,
hope, and fear, gnawed his heart and fevered his veins, and, after a
brief and unsatisfactory attempt to sober his own thoughts, and devise
some plan of search more certain than that which chance might afford
him, he rose, and traversed the apartments, in the unacknowledged hope
which chance alone could suggest.

It was easy to see that he had made his resting-place in the home of
one of the princes of the land; and the splendour of all around him far
outshone the barbarous and rude magnificence of the less civilized
and wealthy Romans. Here, lay the lute as last touched--the gilded and
illumined volume as last conned; there, were seats drawn famil