ergy of his manner, showed
that poor Billy's faculties were slightly under the influences of the
Tuscan grape; and the youth smiled at sight of an excess so rare.

"How hard it must be," said Massy, "to go back to the workaday routine
of life after one of these outbursts,--to resume not alone the drudgery,
but all the slavish observances that humble men yield to great ones!"

"'Tis what Bacon says, 'There's nothing so hard as unlearnin' anything;'
and the proof is how few of us ever do it! We always go on mucin' old
thoughts with new,--puttin' different kinds of wine into the same glass,
and then wonderin' we are not invigorated!"

"You 're in a mood for moralizing to-night, I see, Billy," said the
other, smiling.

"The levities of life always puts me on that thrack, just as too bright
a day reminds me to take out an umbrella with me."

"Yet I do not see that all your observation of the world has indisposed
you to enjoy it, or that you take harsher views of life the closer you
look at it."

"Quite the reverse; the more I see of mankind, the more I 'm struck with
the fact that the very wickedest and worst can't get rid of remorse!
'Tis something out of a man's nature entirely--something that dwells
outside of him--sets him on to commit a crime; and then he begins
to rayson and dispute with the temptation, just like one keepin' bad
company, and listenin' to impure notions and evil suggestions day after
day; as he does this, he gets to have a taste for that kind of low
society,--I mane with his own bad thoughts,--till at last every other
ceases to amuse him. Look! what's that there; where are they goin' with
all the torches there?" cried he, suddenly, springing up and pointing
to a dense crowd that passed along the street. It was a band of music,
dressed in a quaint mediaeval costume, on its way to serenade some
palace.

"Let us follow and listen to them, Billy," said the youth; and they
arose and joined the throng.

Following in the wake of the dense mass, they at last reached the gates
of a great palace, and after some waiting gained access to the spacious
courtyard. The grim old statues and armorial bearings shone in the glare
of a hundred torches, and the deep echoes rang with the brazen voices of
the band as, pent up within the quadrangle, the din of a large
orchestra arose. On a great terrace overhead numerous figures were
grouped,--indistinctly seen from the light of the _salons_ within,--but
whose mysteri