flies, which his Orestes must catch for him."

Antonio left the room almost stupefied.

* * * * *

The Florentine youth had taken up his abode in his teacher's house,
for the sake of giving himself up without any interruption to his
sorrows and his studies. He had chosen the most retired and highest
room in the whole building, to be quite alone and unvisited by
anybody. When he lookt from hence over the beautiful and fruitful
fields about the city, and followed the course of the river with his
eyes, he thought the more intensely of his, lost love. He had got her
picture from her parents, as well as some toys she had played with in
her childhood; above all he delighted in a nightingale, that in its
moving plaints seemed to him to be only pouring forth the woes of his
own heart. This bird had been fostered by Crescentia with the utmost
care and fondness; and Antonio preserved it like something holy, as
the last relic of his earthly happiness.

With other young men of his own age he never mingled, excepting the
Spaniard Alfonso, to whom he was united by their equally enthusiastic
admiration of Pietro Abano. The Podesta Ambrosio had resigned his
office and left the city: he meant to spend the rest of his life at
Rome, for the sake of getting beyond the reach of his relations at
Venice. He had given up the thought of ever again finding the twin
daughter who had been stolen from him in her infancy; and his grief
had been embittered by Antonio's calling back this hope with such a
shock into his soul. He was convinced the young man had misled him and
himself been deceived by the fevered dreams of that night.

In the morning Pietro set off with his trusty servant. Antonio was
left alone in the large house, the rooms of which were all lockt up.
The night had past over him in sleeplessness. That terrific figure was
evermore standing before his eyes, which, greatly as it had appalled
him, had yet reawakened all his most delightful feelings. It was as
though all power of thinking had died away within him; visions which
he could not hold fast kept moving in ever-rolling circles before his
imagination. It was a frightful feeling to him, that he knew not what
to think of his venerated teacher, that he had a boding of lawless
mysteries, and of a horrour which since that look into the chamber
seemed to be awaiting him, to strip him of all optimism, and to
deliver him up to madness and despair.

The n