en my spirit, already at rest,
with new visions already unfolding before it, was summoned back so
cruelly out of its calm peace. My body was already a stranger to me, a
hostile and hateful thing. I came back like the freed slave to chains
and a dungeon. Help me, my true lover; save me."

"How!" said Antonio: "Oh God in Heaven! what have I lived to! in what
a state do I find thee again! And thou canst not, mayst not return to
life altogether? thou canst not again be mine, again be thy parents'
dear child?"

"Impossible!" cried Crescentia with a tone of anguish, and her
paleness became yet whiter from dismay. "Alas! Life! How can any one
seek it again, who has once been set free from it? Thou, my poor
Antonio, conceivest not the deep longing, the love, the rapture,
wherewith I think upon death and pant for it. Even more intensely than
of yore I loved thee, even more fervently than my lips at the Easter
festival pined for the holy wafer, do I now yearn for death. Then I
shall love thee more freely and more wholly in God; then I shall be
given back to my parents. Then I shall live; formerly I was dead; now
I am a cloud and a shadow, a riddle to myself and to thee. Alas, when
thy love and our youth have gleamed in upon me in my present state,
when I have heard my well-known nightingale from above pouring her
song into my loneliness, what a sweet shuddering, what a dark joy and
pain have then rippled through the dusk of my being! O help me to get
loose from this chain."

"What can I do for thee?" askt Antonio.

Her talking had again broken the strength of the apparition: she
paused awhile with closed eyelids; then she spake faintly: "Alas! if I
could go into a church, if I could be present when the Lord is lifted
up and appears to the congregation in the sacrament, then in that
blessed moment I should die of rapture."

"What should hinder me," said Antonio, "from informing against the
villain, and delivering him up to the tribunals and to the
inquisition?"

"No! no! no!" groaned the figure in the greatest terrour: "thou dost
not know him; he is too mighty; he would make his escape, and again
tear me to him within the circle of his wickedness. Quietly and by
silence alone can we succeed; he must feel secure. A chance has
brought thee to me. Thou must make him believe himself quite safe, and
keep everything secret."

The youth collected his senses; he talkt much with his former
betrothed; but speaking became more and