ow me as my
bondslave into my kingdom.... Depart hence, ye poor wretches!" he
cried to the youths: "what more we have still to settle, it befits not
you to behold!" and a tremendous clap of thunder shook the house to the
bottom.

Dazzled, horrour-struck, Antonio and Alfonso rusht out; their knees
tottered; their teeth chattered. Without knowing how, they found
themselves again in the street; they fled into a neighbouring church;
for a howling whirlwind now arose, with thunder and lightning, and the
house, when they lookt behind them, was burning and had fallen in
ruins.

Two dark shadows hovered over the flame, fighting, as it seemed, and
twining round each other, and wrestling and dashing each other to and
fro: yells of despair and peals of scornful laughter resounded
alternately between the pauses of the loudly raving storm.

* * * * *

It was a long time before Antonio could collect calmness enough to go
and seek for the house of the old woman according to the directions he
had received. He found her drest out; and she cried to him merrily:
"What! Florentine! are you too come to see me again at last?"

"Where is your daughter?" askt Antonio, trembling with anxiety.

"If you wish to have her now," replied the old woman, "I won't keep
her from you. But you must pay honestly for her, you or the Podesta of
Padua, if he still lives; for she is his child, whom I stole from him
long since, because the Marconis vouchsafed me a round sum of money
for doing so."

"If you can prove it," said the youth, "you shall have whatever you
ask."

"Proofs, as many as you please," cried the beldam: "trinkets with arms
on them, clothes she had on at the time, a mole on her right shoulder,
which of course her mother must know best. But you shall also have
letters from the Marconis, writings which I carried off with her from
Padua in my hurry, everything ... only money must be forthcoming."

Antonio paid her all that he had about him, and then gave her the
jewels from his hat and clothes, some pearls, and a gold chain. She
swept it all in laughing, while she said: "Don't be surprised that I
am in such haste, and so easily satisfied. The wench has run away from
me, because she was determined not to have any lover, and has stuck
herself into the nunnery beside Trajan's column: the abbess would not
give her up to me; but only send in your name, and the young chit will
jump into your arms; for she dream