me about
the events which you said had befallen you the night before...."

"Signor Ambrosio!" cried Antonio, and his hand fell involuntarily on
his sword.

"Leave that alone," continued the old man calmly: "far be from me the
wish to accuse you of a falsehood; I have too long known your noble
character, and your love for truth. But has it never struck you, my
poor young friend, without my putting it into your head, that ever
since the night when you met my daughter's coffin, having come with
the thought to carry her home with you the next day as your bride,
your senses have got into disorder, your reason has been much
weakened? During that lonely night, beneath that storm, in the
strongly excited state of your passions, you fancied you saw my lost
child again; and the recollections of your unfortunate father, of your
long-lost mother, connected themselves with her image. In this way
were those visions bred, and fixt themselves firmly in your brain. Did
we find a single trace of the hut? Was a human creature in the
neighbourhood able to tell us a word about the robbers you killed?
That awful meeting again with my real daughter, in which I perforce
must believe, is of itself enough to fever the very coldest feelings
into madness; and need one marvel then at your talking of having
encountered another impossibility, at your story about finding the
dead Pietro come to life among the mountains, and not knowing him
again, and about those almost farcical tricks of jugglery that were
played you, all which you have related to us with the very same
assurance? No, my good Antonio, pain and grief have distracted your
sounder senses, so that you see and believe in things which have no
real existence."

Antonio was perplext and knew not what to reply. Greatly as the loss
of his beloved had shaken all the faculties of his soul, he still was
too clearly conscious of the events he had past through, to bring
their reality thus in question.

He now felt a new motive to activity: he wisht at least to prove that
the story of that night was no dreamy phantom, that his second
Crescentia was an actual being; and thus it became his liveliest
desire to find her again, and to restore her to her afflicted parents,
or at least make Ambrosio acknowledge that he had misjudged him.

In this mood he left his old friend, and wandered about the city to
and fro, prest by the concourse of people, and half stunned by shouts,
and questions, and stories