VI

'I sing, poor swan, of my consumèd years,But singing brings my torture no relief;Love with his laughter blows the flame of grief,And mocking cries, "Extinguish it with tears."'

'I sing, poor swan, of my consumèd years,

But singing brings my torture no relief;

Love with his laughter blows the flame of grief,

And mocking cries, "Extinguish it with tears."'

While waiting till his consort should have returned from the chase, the duke took a walk through his domain. He inspected the stables, built like a Greek temple, with columns, porticos, and doubly-lighted windows; the splendid dairy, where he tasted junkets and new-made cheese; then, passing numberless hay-barns and sheds, came to the farm and the cattle-yards. Here every detail rejoiced his heart; the sound of the milk falling from the udders of his favourite Languedoc cow; the newly-littered sow's motherly gruntings; the smell of honey from the swarming hives. A smile of satisfaction illumined his dark face; truly his home was like a filled goblet! He returned to the house and waited under the gallery. It was towards evening, but not yet the hour of sunset; from the water-meadows of the Ticino came the pungent freshness of the grass. The duke cast his eyes slowly over his estate; pastures, meadows, fields watered by a network of ditches, planted with long rows of apple, and pear, and mulberry trees, trellised with the hanging garlands of the vines. From Mortara to Abbiategrasso and further to the very horizon, where in the creeping twilight the snows of Monte Rosa gleamed with unearthly radiance, the boundless plain of Lombardy flowered like the Paradise of God.

'I thank thee, Lord,' said the devout duke raising his eyes heavenward. 'I thank Thee for all. What more is there that I could desire of Thee? Once a barren and leafless wilderness stretched on every side, but I and Leonardo have made these canals, watered this land, and now every blade of grass, every ear of corn blesses me as I bless thee, O Lord!'

Then was heard the tongue of the hounds, and the cry of the huntsmen, and above the vines was seen a red lure, a formless object with partridge wings, for bringing back the falcons. Ludovico and hismajor domowent the round of the tables to be sure that all was ready for the evening feast. Presently the duchess made her entry, and then the guests trooped in, among them Leonardo. A grace was recited, and they sat down to table.

The first course consisted of artichokes sent by express from Genoa, fat eels and carp from the Mantua ponds, gift from Isabella d'Este, and a jelly of the breasts of good capons. The company ate with their fingers and withknives, forks being reserved for state occasions. Certain tiny golden ones with crystal prongs were, however, accorded to the ladies at the fruit course. The munificent host assiduously pressed his guests to eat; and as none ever blushed to be hungry, the food and the liquors circulated freely and long.

Lucrezia had her seat beside the duchess, and the admiring eyes of the duke rested on them both. It pleased him that his wife should honour the maiden of his fancy, passing dainties from her own plate to the girl's, and caressing her hand with that expansive and playful tenderness which young women sometimes exhibit towards one another.

The conversation centred in the hunt, and Beatrice told how the sudden burst of a stag from the thicket had almost thrown her from her horse. Much laughter followed when the fool Gioda, the boaster, told of the boar he had slain, singly, and with superhuman boldness and dexterity. The animal was a tame pig, cast in his path designedly, and the carcase was brought in and exhibited. The fool displayed excesses of rage at these aspersions; but his fury and simplicity were equally assumed. He knew a bad jest from a good one.

By degrees the laughter grew louder, and abundant potations reddened all faces; the ladies surreptitiously loosened their stay-laces. The cellarers brought round light Cyprus wine, both red and white, mulled at the fire, and spiced with pistachios, cinnamon, and cloves. When the duke called for wine, his command was passed out from one to the other of the stewards in a solemn chant, as of a church function; a goblet was brought from the buffet, and the chief Seneschal dipped a talisman—an unicorn on a gold chain—into the liquor. If it were poisoned the horn of this animal was to turn black and to shed drops of gore. Similar talismans, of toad's-stone and serpent's-tongue, were put in the salt-cellars. Count Bergamini, Cecilia's husband, had been given the seat of honour, and was especially gay to-night, in spite of age and gout. Pointing to the unicorn, he cried:—

'I fancy not the King of France has such a horn as your most illustrious Excellency!'

'Hee! hee! hee!' crowed Janachi the hunchback, shaking his rattle and clanging the bells of his motley cap, surmounted by ass's ears. 'Believe him, nuncle, believe him!'

And the duke good-humouredly threatened the jester with his finger. Now silver trumpets blared to announce the entry of the roasts—boar's head and peacocks. Last came a pasty in the figure of a castle; from its walls sounded a trumpet, and when the crust was cut a dwarf in parrot's plumage sprang out and hopped round the table, till captured and imprisoned in a gilded cage. Thence he screamed out a paternoster.

'Messer,' said the duchess to her lord, 'to what joyful event must we attribute the unexpected good fare of this feast?'

Il Moro made no answer, but exchanged sly glances with Count Bergamini. Cecilia's husband understood that the celebration was for the new-born Cesare.

They sat over the boar's head for more than an hour, making no economy of time, and remembering the proverb, 'At table none groweth old.' At the close of the repast, Fra Talpone caused general hilarity. He was a monk of great corpulence, quarrelled for by princes, being renowned for voracity. He had greatly diverted His Holiness the Pope by devouring the third part of a bishop's cassock, cut in pieces, and steeped in vinegar. Now at a signal from the duke a huge platter of 'buzecchio'—tripe stewed with quinces—was placed before the friar. He sighed, crossed himself, rolled up his sleeves, and consumed it with relish and incredible rapidity.

'If thou had'st dined with Christ when He dividedThe loaves and fishes miracle provided,No morsel had remained a dog to fill,Whilst thou unsatisfied had'st hungered still,'

'If thou had'st dined with Christ when He divided

The loaves and fishes miracle provided,

No morsel had remained a dog to fill,

Whilst thou unsatisfied had'st hungered still,'

sang Bellincioni on the spur of the moment. Roars of laughter broke from the company. Only the face of the lonely and taciturn Leonardo retained its expression of resignedennui.

When the concluding dish of gilded oranges had been served on silver plates, and handed with Malvoisie, then Antonio Camella da Pistoja, a court poet, recited an ode in which the duke was addressed by the Arts and Sciences and Elements in these terms:—

'We were slaves; thou camest, and we are free.Evviva il Moro.'

After supper the guests adjourned to the garden called 'The Paradise'; laid out in geometrical figures with shorn edgings of box, alleys of laurel and myrtle, shaded walks, labyrinths, loggias, and woven arbours. Rugs and silken pillows were thrown on a lawn freshened by a glittering fountain. The ladies and their cavaliers grouped themselves with relaxing ceremony before the little court theatre, and an act of the 'Miles Gloriosus' of Plautus was performed. It was tedious, but the audience, out of reverence for the ancients, feigned attention. After the comedy the young people played ball, tennis, and blind-man's-buff, running about, laughing and catching each other like children among the luxuriant and fragrant roses and orange-trees, while the elders were at dice, draughts, and chess. Others of the company gathered in a close circle on the steps of the fountain, and toldnovelliafter the fashion of the youths and ladies of theDecameron.

Then they danced to the tune of the favourite air of 'Lorenzo dei Medici':—

'Quant e bella giovinezzaMa si fugge tuttaviaChi vuol esser lieto, siaDi doman non c'è certezza.'(Fair-fleeting Youth must snatch at happiness;He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.)

'Quant e bella giovinezzaMa si fugge tuttaviaChi vuol esser lieto, siaDi doman non c'è certezza.'

'Quant e bella giovinezza

Ma si fugge tuttavia

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia

Di doman non c'è certezza.'

(Fair-fleeting Youth must snatch at happiness;He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.)

(Fair-fleeting Youth must snatch at happiness;

He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.)

After the dance Madonna Diana, a gentle girl with a pale and lovely face, sang to the low notes of the lute a plaint on unrequited love. As by enchantment the noise and the laughter ceased, and all listened with thoughtful and reminiscent attention. It was long before any one spoke, and after the ending of the song the hush was broken only by the quiet rustling of the fountain. But presently the voices and the mirth and the music awoke again, and were to be heard till late at night, when the laurels were lighted by fireflies, and in the darkened heaven reigned the new-born moon. And over all the Paradiso floated a soft air, rich with perfume of orange-blossom; and still trembled the notes of the Medicean canzone:—

'Chi vuol esser lieto, siaDi doman non c'è certezza.

'Chi vuol esser lieto, sia

Di doman non c'è certezza.

The duke saw a glimmer of light in one of the four palace towers. It was the lamp of Messer Ambrogio da Rosate, prime astrologer, and a member of the Secret Council, who was observing the conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the sign of Aquarius, a matter of profound significance for the house of Sforza.

As if pricked in his memory, the duke hastily saluted Madonna Lucrezia, with whom he had been engaged in tender discourse, and entered the palace. He looked at the clock, and having awaited the precise minute and second enjoined by the astrologer, swallowed a rhubarb pill, and consulted a calendar in which he read the following note:—

'August 5th.—Eight minutes past ten of the evening, pray heartily on your knees, after folding your hands and raising your eyes to Heaven.'

Fearing to be late, and so miss the prescription's efficacy, he hurried to the chapel, unlighted save by a single lamp before a picture. The duke loved the picture; it was by Leonardo, and represented Cecilia, Countess of Bergamini, arrayed like the Madonna, blessing a hundred-petalled rose. He counted eight minutes by the hour-glass, sank on his knees, folded his hands, and recited theConfiteor. He prayed long and fervently, his eyes on the picture.

'Mother of God,' he murmured, 'protect, save, and have mercy on me, on my son Massimiliano, and Cesare, the newly-born. I commend unto thee Beatrice, my consort, and Madonna Cecilia. And likewise Gian Galeazzo, my nephew, for thou see'st my heart, and knowest that I wish no evil to my nephew, though it may be that his death would set free not only my state, but all Italy.'

Here he remembered the proof of his right to his throne which he had obtained from the jurisconsult, and which stated that his elder brother (father of Gian Galeazzo) having been born unto Francesco Sforza, the condottiere, before he became Francesco Sforza and Duke of Milan, whereas Ludovico was born unto the said Francescoafterhe had become duke—the younger not the elder was obviously the heir to the ducal dignities of the common father.

At this moment, however, the decision seemed to Ludovicorather ingenious than convincing. He hesitated to put it before the Mother of God, contenting himself thus:—

'If in anything I have sinned or shall sin before thee, O Queen of Heaven, thou knowest that I do so not for myself but for the good of my people and of Italy. Mediate for me with God, and I will glorify thee by the building in splendour of the cathedral in this town of Milan, and of the Certosa at Pavia, and of other glorious monuments.'

After his prayer, candle in hand, he went toward his bedchamber, passing through the dark rooms of the sleeping palace. In one of them, however, he encountered Madonna Lucrezia.

'Truly, the god of Love favours me!' he thought.

'Signore!' exclaimed the girl; her voice broke, she would have thrown herself on her knees before him, as she added, 'have pity on me, my lord!'

And she told him that her brother Matteo Crivelli, chief of the chamberlains, a man of abandoned life but whom she devotedly loved, had lost at play great sums of the public money.

'Fear not, madonna! I will save your brother.'

He was silent for a moment, and added with a deep sigh:—

'And you too, O madonna, will you not be to me less cruel?'

She looked questioningly at him with serene and innocent eyes.

'I do not understand you, signore. What is your meaning?'

Her modesty rendered her yet fairer.

'It means, my sweet,' he said, throwing his arm almost roughly round her, 'it means—but, Lucrezia, have you not seen that I love you?'

'Loose me! Let me go! What do you, signore! Madonna Beatrice——'

'Shall not know!' said the duke.

'No, my lord, no. She is so good, so generous to me. Leave me, for pity's sake—'

'I will save your brother—do all your desire—be your slave. Only have pity on me.'

And half-sincere in his passion and his tears, he murmured in trembling tones those lines of the poet's:—

'I sing, poor swan, of my consumèd years,But singing brings my torture no relief;Love with his laughter blows the flame of grief,And mocking cries, "Extinguish it with tears."'

'I sing, poor swan, of my consumèd years,

But singing brings my torture no relief;

Love with his laughter blows the flame of grief,

And mocking cries, "Extinguish it with tears."'

'Let me go! Let me go!' said the girl desperately.

But he bent over her, feeling the freshness of her breath, the perfume of violet and musk, and forcibly kissed her on the lips. For one moment Lucrezia languished in his embrace, then, with a despairing cry, broke from him and fled.

Having reached the nuptial apartment, he found the lamp extinguished, and Beatrice already reposing in the huge, mausoleum-like couch on a dais in the middle of the floor under a blue silk baldachin. It was adorned with silver curtains, and a coverlet, costly as the vestment of a priest, of cloth of gold and pearls.

'Bice,' he whispered caressingly; 'Bice, dost thou sleep?' and he would have saluted her, but she repulsed him.

'Bice—why is this?'

'Leave me in peace; I am fain of sleep.'

'But why, dear one, why? If thou knew'st how I adore thee!'

'Yes, yes, I know you adore us all together. Your consort, and Cecilia, andperdio! the Muscovy slave-woman, the red-haired fool whom you kissed in the obscurer angle of my wardrobe room!'

''Twas a jest.'

'A jest I care not for.'

'Alas, Bice, these many days thou hast been harsh to me! Well, I confess it—I am guilty; 'twas a scurvy jest—a caprice.'

'Your caprices, my lord, are many.'

She turned towards him angrily. 'How is it you have no shame? Why, why these lies? Do I not know you? —read you to the soul? I would not have you think this jealousy; but I will not, hear you, my lord?—Iwill notbe one among your lemans.'

'I swear to thee, Bice, I have loved none save thee. By my soul's eternal weal, I swear it.'

She was silent, surprised less by his words than by the tone in which they were uttered. He was not wholly lying. The more he deceived her the more he felt he loved her, as if passion were inflamed by fear, qualms of conscience, pity, and remorse.

'Pardon, Bice, pardon,' he implored; 'consider my love for thee——'

She submitted herself; and as he embraced her, invisible in the darkness, he remembered serene and innocent eyes, and a perfume of freshness, of violet and musk; the two loves confused themselves in an exquisite sensation.

'Truly to-day thou art something like a lover!' she said with inward pride.

'Of a truth, dear one; it is still as it was in our first days——'

'Foolishness!' cried Beatrice laughing; 'Fie on this trifling. Rather should'st thou be thinking of deeper matters. It seems as thoughhishealth were mending.'

'Nay, 'tis but few days since Luigi Marliani assured me there was no hope for him,' replied the duke; ''tis true we have now a little amendment, but it will not be for long; he is doomed beyond remission.'

'Who can tell?' urged Beatrice; 'he is over-tended. Of a truth, Ludovico, I marvel at your patience. You bear insults like a sheep. You say "The power is in our hands," but were it not better to renounce power at once than to tremble for it night and day like thieves; to lick the dust before that haughty bastard who is the King of France; to be slaves at the mercy of the impudent Alfonso; to weary ourselves in propitiating that perfidious sorceress of Aragon! They say she is pregnant again: a new serpent will come forth from that cursed nest. And to fare thus for our whole lives! Consider, Ludovico, for our whole lives! And you call that having the power in our own hands!'

'But the physicians constantly aver,' repeated the duke, 'that this malady is incurable; sooner or later——'

'Ay, 'tis later then. For ten years he hath been dying.'

There was a silence. Suddenly she threw her beautiful arm round his neck, and drawing herself to him, she whispered in his ear—words which made him shudder.

'Bice! may Christ and His most holy Mother pardon thee! Never—dost heed me?—never again speak to me of that.'

'You are afraid, perhaps? Would you wishmeto try?'

He did not answer, but asked presently:—

'Of what thinkest thou?'

'My lord,' she answered, 'I am thinking about peaches.'

'Ay; I have bidden the gardener send thee of the ripest.'

'I care not for them. My thought was of the peaches of Messer Leonardo. Hast thou heard aught of those?'

'What should I have heard?'

'That they be poisoned.'

'How poisoned?'

''Tis true. He hath poisoned them himself, by magic, for his experiments. Monna Sidonia told me; wonderfully beautiful peaches!'

And again they were silent, embracing thus in the stillness and the dark; their thoughts united, each listening to the quickened beat of the other's heart—no further speech needed. At last Il Moro, with almost paternal tenderness, kissed his young wife on the brow, and made the sign of the cross.

'Sleep, dear one,' he said, 'sleep in peace.'

That night the duchess saw in her dreams fair peaches on a platter of gold. She proved one and found it succulent and toothsome; but of a sudden a voice cried unto her:—

'Poison! poison!' and again, 'Poison!'

The duke likewise dreamed his dream. And in it he fancied himself walking on the shining lawn beside the fountain. And before him at a little distance he saw three women, white-clad and embracing like fair sisters. And nearing himself, he perceived the one to be Beatrice, and the second Lucrezia, and the third Cecilia. He thanked his God that at last they were friends; but in his heart he blamed them that they had not been friends from the first.

The clock in the castle tower struck the hour of midnight, and everywhere was the silence of sleep, saving only on thealtana, where the duchess was wont to gild her hair; for thither Morgantina, the dwarf, had fled, having escaped from the closet in which she had been confined: there, alone in the darkness, she bewailed the loss of her baby.

'They have slain me my son! And wherefore, O Lord, wherefore? He had done no wrong to any one; he alone comforted me!'

The night was serene; the air so pure, so transparent, that against the horizon the icy summits of the Alps were visible,like everlasting crystals. The stillness was long perturbed by the mournful cries of the madwoman, like the keening of some bird of evil omen. Suddenly she gave a sigh, raised her eyes to heaven, and was silent.

The stillness of death followed; and the fool smiled at the stars which, far above in the measureless blue of a summer night, were shining upon her—innocently and mysteriously shining.

'Heaven above—heaven below,Stars above—stars below,All which is over man—under him shows;Glory to him who the riddle readeth!'Tabula Smaragdina.

'Heaven above—heaven below,

Stars above—stars below,

All which is over man—under him shows;

Glory to him who the riddle readeth!'

Tabula Smaragdina.

In an obscure outskirt of Milan, near the Porta Vercellina, the Customs House, and the canal called the Acqua Cantarana, stood an old house, very solitary, and remarkable for the smoke which day and night ascended in large spirals from an immense, winding, and blackened chimney. Here dwelt Monna Sidonia, the wise woman. The upper floor she hired to Messer Galeotto Sacrobosco, an alchemist; and in the lower she lived herself with Cassandra, his niece, the young daughter of Luigi Sacrobosco, a celebrated traveller, who had traversed Greece, the islands of the Archipelago, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, in the quest for specimens of ancient art. He possessed himself of all that came to hand: a Greek marble, or a trifle of amber, a sham inscription from the tomb of Homer, a new tragedy by Euripides, or a peroration by Demosthenes. Some thought him a great man, but others dubbed him an impostor; and not a few believed him crazy. His imagination was so enthralled by pagan recollections that though to the last a good Catholic, he prayed to the Olympian Hermes, and regarded Wednesday (Mercoledi) his day, as one singularly propitious for mercantile ventures. No toil, no privations, daunted him in his enterprises. On one occasion, having already put out ten leagues to sea, he returned to copy an inscription ofwhich accident had informed him. Having lost his collection in a shipwreck, his hair turned white with grief. If asked why he so plagued himself and spent his days in such sore labour, he always replied:—

'I desire to raise the dead.'

In the little town of Mistra, near the ruins of Lacedæmon, he met a maiden of extraordinary beauty, resembling the statues of Artemis. She was the daughter of a poor and drunken village deacon; Luigi married her and took her to Italy with a new copy of the Iliad, the fragments of a Hecate, and the shreds of an earthenware amphora.

To the pair was born a daughter, whom they called Cassandra, Luigi being at that time impassioned for Æschylean tragedy. The wife died, and the father was off on his wanderings, so the child was left to the care of Demetrius Chalcondylas, a learned Greek from Constantinople who had been brought to Milan by the Sforzas. This old man of seventy, a double-faced, cunning, and secretive person, pretended a vast zeal for the Catholic Church; in his heart, however, like Cardinal Bessarione, and most of the immigrant Greeks, he was a disciple of the last of the masters of the ancient wisdom, Gemistus Pletho, the Replete with Learning, the neoplatonist who had died forty years before at Mistra, where Luigi had become enamoured of his Artemis. This man had been affirmed by his disciples to be a re-incarnation of the illustrious Plato himself; the theologians, on the contrary, maintained that he had revived the anti-Christian heresies of Julian the Apostate, and that he was to be fought not by argument and controversy, but by the Inquisition and the stake. Chiefly they accused him on account of certain words uttered to his disciples three years before his death. He had said: 'But a few years after I shall have died, one sole Truth shall reign over all peoples and nations, and men shall unite in the single faith' (unam eandemque religionem universum orbem esse suscepturam). Being questioned whether he meant the faith of Christ or of Mahomet, he answered: 'Neither the one nor yet the other, but a faith which in naught shall differ from the ancient paganism' (neutram, inquit, sed a gentilitate non differentem).

Cassandra was bred by Chalcondylas in strict though feigned Christian piety. Overhearing, however, much neoplatonic talk, and not understanding its philosophicalsubtleties, the maid wove for herself a fantastic dream of the coming Resurrection of the Gods. On her breast she wore a talisman against fever, a present from her father; it was a gem representing Dionysus as a naked youth, with thyrsus and vine-branch, a rearing panther trying to lick the grapes in his hand. Sometimes, when quite alone, she would hold her amethyst up to the sun and gaze into its purple depths until her head swam, and she saw the god in a vision, living, and ever young and adorable.

Messer Luigi ruined himself at last in his quest for treasures, and died miserably of a putrid fever in a shepherd's hut beside the ruins of a Phœnician temple, which he had himself discovered. Soon after, Galeotto, his brother, who also had wandered for many years in pursuit, not of antiquities but of the philosopher's stone, came to Milan, established himself in the little house by the Vercellina gate, and took his niece to live with him.

She still, however, frequented the house of Chalcondylas, and thither came Giovanni Boltraffio to execute some copying for Messer Giorgio Merula.

Encountering Cassandra again, Giovanni remembered the talk he had overheard between her and Zoroastro about the poisoned tree, and he shuddered. Many told him the maiden was a sorceress, but her charm was not to be resisted, and almost every evening when his work was done he sought her in the lonely cottage by the Vercellina gate. They sat on a hillock together above the dark and silently swift waters of the canal, not far from the sluice gates near the convent of St. Radegonda. A scarce visible path, tangled with elder-bushes, wormwood, and nettles, led to the little hillock; no one ever passed that way, and there the two met and loitered and talked long together.

It was a sultry evening; at rare intervals a gust came flying, raising the white dust and rustling in the leaves. It passed by, leaving the stillness stiller than before. Nothing was heard but the dull, seemingly subterranean growl of distant thunder, and against this low, threatening, and solemn roar, the broken shrillness of a lute and the drunken song of the customs-collector celebrating the Sunday feast in theneighbouring tavern. At times a flash broke across the clouds, and then for a moment the little house with the brick chimney, and the black smoke of the alchemist's furnace, the long lean sacristan fishing from the bank, the straight canal with the rows of larches and willows, the flat-bottomed barges from the Lago Maggiore bringing white marble for the cathedral, and drawn by sorry horses, their loose towing-ropes and the long whips of the drivers dipping in the water—all stood out sharp and clear against the prevailing blackness. All was again wrapped in gloom, save for the alchemist's fire always vividly glowing. It was reflected in the Cantarana, whence came noisome odours of stagnant backwaters, rotting fern-leaves, tar, and decaying wood.

Giovanni and Cassandra were in their accustomed haunt.

''Tis tedious!' cried the girl, stretching herself wearily and snapping her delicate white fingers behind her head; 'every day the same dull round. To-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day. That same foolish sacristan catching nothing; the same filthy smoke from Messer Galeotto's workshop, where he, too, eternally seeks what he will never find; the same boats towed by the same hateful horses; the same cracked lute! Ah, if it would but change! If the French would come and rid us of Milan! if the sacristan would catch a fish, or my uncle find some gold.Dio Mio!what weariness!'

'I know!' cried Giovanni. 'I also at times find life so wearisome that I am fain to die. But Fra Benedetto taught me a prayer very prevalent against the demon of discontent. Shall I recite it for you?'

'Nay, Giovanni. It is long since I have been able to pray to your God.'

'My God? What god is there but my God? the only God?'

A quick flash, like the lightning of the storm, illumined her face; never had it seemed to him so mystic, so unearthly, so fair. She was silent for a time, passing her hand over the dark aureole of her hair.

'Hearken, friend. It was long ago—yonder—in my native land. I was scarce more than a babe. My father had taken me with him on a journey. We visited the ruins of an ancient temple. They stood high on a promontory; the sea was around us and the screaming gulls; the waves werebreaking endlessly on black rocks, sharp as needles, and covered with salt foam, which rose and fell, running off the sharp points of the rocks in a seething stream. He found a half-faded inscription on the fragment of a marble slab. I sat long alone on the temple steps, listening to the sea and breathing in its freshness, mixed with the scent of the sea-herbs. Then I went into the abandoned shrine. The columns were yellow, but scarce crumbled by time, and between them the azure sky seemed dark. There were poppies growing in the crevices between the stones—pink poppies—the poppies of Greece! It was quite still, but for that muffled roar of the waves which filled the temple as if with the voices of prayer. And I fell on my knees and prayed to the god who had once been enshrined there—unknown and now rejected by men. I kissed his marble steps, and I wept and loved him because no one on earth loved him any more, nor prayed to him—because he was dead. Never since have I prayed so fervently! And that temple—it was the temple of DIONYSUS!'

'By the love of God, Cassandra, what are you saying? This Dionysus, whom you call God, exists not, nor did exist.'

'Did he not?' cried the girl, scornfully; 'then why teach the holy fathers, whom you reverence, that the gods, banished in the days of the conquering Jesus, were changed into most potent demons? How could Giorgio da Novara, the great astronomer, learn by exact observation that the conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn produced the teaching of Moses; with Mars, that of the Chaldeans; with Venus, that of Mahomet; with Mercury, that of Christ; and that conjunction with the moon—future for him—would bring the teaching of Antichrist and the Resurrection of the Gods?'

The storm was drawing nearer, the thunder roared louder, the flashes grew ever brighter, heavy clouds were spreading overhead, yet still the broken lute sobbed forth its insistent melody on the threatening air.

'O madonna!' cried Boltraffio clasping his hands, 'do you not see that 'tis the devil who is tempting you that he may lure you to the abyss! Eternal curses upon him!'

The girl turned, laid both hands on his shoulders, and said:—

'And does he not tempt you also? Why did you leaveyour sainted teacher, Benedetto? Why did you enter into the school of the impious Leonardo? What brings you hither unto me? Do you not know I am a witch? Are you not affrighted lest you lose your soul talking here with me?'

'The strength of the Lord defend us!' he stammered, shuddering.

She silently drew near him, fixing him with her wondrous eyes. At that moment the lightning rent the cloud and flashed on her pale face. Was she the goddess who had risen before Giovanni's awestruck gaze from her tomb on the Hill of the Mill?

''Tis she!' he thought in terror. 'She has found me again, the White She-devil!'

He would have risen, but his forces seemed to have left him. He felt the girl's hot breath on his cheek, and listened as she whispered:—

'Will you that I reveal everything to you? Will you fly with me thither where He is? Ah, it is good there!Thereis no weariness; nothing maketh ashamed. There all things are permitted as in Paradise!'

A cold sweat broke out on Giovanni's brow, but curiosity impelled him, and in a low voice he asked:—

'Where?'

'Al Sabbato!' she answered with passionate languor, her lips almost touching his cheek.

A peal of thunder, now quite overhead, shook earth and sky, rolling through the air in majestic reverberation, like the laugh of unseen giants. Then slowly it died away into the great silence.

And then rang out the melancholy peaceful sound of the convent bell, the evening Angelus. Giovanni made the sign of the cross.

'It is late,' said the girl rising; 'I must return homeward. Do you see those torches, there on the road? 'Tis the duke coming to visit Messer Galeotto, who is to show him an interesting experiment with lead. He thinks it can be turned into gold.'

True it was, the tramping of hoofs was heard coming from the Porta Vercellina. Cassandra lingered for a moment, then darted through the tangled elder-bushes and disappeared.

Messer Galeotto had consumed his whole life in the search for the philosopher's stone. Having finished his medical course at Bologna University, he had entered asfamulusthe service of Count Bernardo Trevisani, renowned as an adept in the occult sciences. Afterwards, for fifteen years, he had sought the transforming mercury in all possible substances; in volatile salts, bismuth, arsenic, human blood, gall, and hair, in animals and plants. In this fashion the six thousand ducats of his patrimony had been dissipated in the smoke which ascended from his chimney. He must needs live on the wealth of others. Money-lenders cast him into prison; he escaped; and for eight years experimented with eggs, destroying some twenty thousand. Next he studied copperas with Maestro Enrico, the papal pronotary, fell ill from the poisonous fumes, lay in bed for fourteen months, and, deserted by every one, came near dying. Having endured all humiliations and persecutions, starvation, beggary, contempt, and even judicial torture, he wandered as an itinerant artificer through France, Spain, the countries of the Empire, Holland, Greece, Persia, Palestine, Northern Africa. At last, old and worn out, but not yet disillusioned, he returned to Lombardy, where Il Moro promised him the office of court alchemist.

At Milan, in the lonely cottage by the Porta Vercellina, he had set up his laboratory. It was a large chamber, in the middle of which was a clumsy stove of fire-proof earth divided into compartments, and fitted with valves, crucibles and bellows. In one corner of the room was a pile of refuse. The working-table was heaped with every sort of complicated apparatus, cubes, rectifiers, receivers, retorts, funnels, mortars, test-tubes, bottles, baths. A pungent smell was given off by poisonous alkalis and acids. Here the seven gods of Olympus, the seven heavenly planets, a whole occult and mystic universe had its counterpart in metal: the sun in gold, the moon in silver, Venus in brass, Mars, iron, Saturn, lead, Jupiter, tin, and Mercury in quicksilver. Here were substances with barbaric names which struck terror into the profane. Here were wolf's milk, the iron of Achilles, anacardines, asterites (clear-shining stones, having in the midst an image of a full moon), androgyna, and rhaponticum,aristolochia or hart-wort (for giving ease in childbirth); and a priceless drop of the blood of a lion which had cost years to obtain, a gem, red as a ruby, which cures all diseases and blesses with eternal youth.

At his table sat the alchemist, meagre, small, wrinkled as an old mushroom, but still alert and tireless. His head supported on his two hands, Messer Galeotto was gazing intently at a retort, in which with low noise and bubbling was burning oil of Venus, a clear green fluid. The candle that burned by the philosopher's side sent an emerald light through the retort on an ancient parchment folio, a work by the Arab chemist Djabira Abdallah.

Hearing voices and footsteps on the stair, Galeotto rose, threw a glance round the laboratory to make sure all was ready, signed to his silentfamulusto throw fuel on the furnace, and sallied forth to meet his guests.

They were a merry company of knights and dames, just risen from supper and Malvoisie. Leonardo was there, and Marliani, the court physician, a man profoundly versed in alchemy. The ladies entered, and the quiet cell of the student was filled with perfumes, with the rustle of silk, with light chatter and laughter like the hum of birds. One damsel overturned a retort with her hanging sleeve, another meddling with a piece of iron slag cut her dainty glove, another spilt the mercury on the table and screamed with delight on seeing the living silver drops.

'And shall we really see Messer Satan in the fire at the moment of the lead's conversion?' asked Madonna Filiberta of her Spanish lover; 'is it not a sin to assist at such experiments?'

The alchemist whispered in Leonardo's ear:—

'Believe me, Messere, I hold myself much honoured by your visit.' And he warmly clasped his hand, adding before Leonardo could respond:—

'Oh, I know, I know! 'Tis a secret from the crowd; but we understand each other, do we not?'

Then with a smile of great affability he said aloud:—

'With licence from my most illustrious protector, the renowned duke, and of all these loveliest ladies, I will adventure,now to exhibit the divine metamorphosis. Will you all condescend to lend me your honourable attention?'

First he showed his crucible, a melting-pot with thick sides of fire-proof clay; he begged each one to examine it, and tap it, and convince himself there was no concealed deception, while he animadverted on the frauds of pretended philosophers who were wont to have vessels with false bottoms in which gold had been placed, not made. He also craved inspection of the pewter, the fuel, the bellows, and all else, to prove his good faith. Then the lead was chopped into small pieces and consigned to the crucible, which was then put on the hottest place of the furnace. The silent, cross-eyedfamulus—so pale, corpse-like and surly, that one of the ladies near fainted, believing him the expected Messer Satan—began to work a huge pair of bellows, and the fire quickly leaped into flame. Galeotto meanwhile entertained his visitors with conversation, and awakened general mirth by calling his science of alchemycasta meretrix, who had many lovers but deluded them all, offered easy conquest to everybody, but had so far yielded to the embraces of none.

Luigi Marliani, the court physician, a fat, taciturn, gloomy man with a dignified and intelligent face, lost patience with this chatter, and wiping his brow, cried out:—

'Messer Galeotto, methinks 'tis time for business. Your metal is already bubbling.'

Galeotto opened a little blue paper packet which contained a bright yellow powder, viscous and sparkling, like highly polished glass. It had a strong smell of burnt sea-salt. This was the momentous tincture, the long-sought, priceless jewel of alchemy, the wonder-workinglapis philosophorum.

With the point of a knife he detached a speck of the powder no larger than a turnip-seed, wrapped it in a ball of bees-wax, and tossed it into the boiling pewter.

'And what do you consider the strength of that solution?' asked Marliani.

'One to two thousand eight hundred and twenty of the metal to be converted,' replied Galeotto. 'Naturally my solution is not yet perfected, but shortly, I hope, the figures will be one to a million. Then it will suffice to take of it the weight of a grain of millet, to dissolve it in a barrel of water containing the parings of a hazelnut; and finally, to sprinkle your vines therewith; in result you will have your vintagein May.Mare tingerem si Mercurius esset.I would turn the sea into gold had I competency in quicksilver.'

Marliani turned away with a shrug. This bombast infuriated him, and he hinted the impossibility of such transformations by arguments supported by Aristotle.

'Have patience,domine magister,' said Galeotto with a smile; 'in a little space I will propound to you such a syllogism as not all your logic can confute.'

Therewith he threw a handful of white powder in the fire. Clouds of thick smoke filled the laboratory. Hissing and crackling, up leapt a many-coloured flame, changing like a rainbow from blue to green, from red to yellow. The spectators were alarmed, and Filiberta afterward swore that at the instant the flame was purple, she saw in it the face of the Devil. The alchemist with a long hooked iron raised the lid of the crucible. The metal, white-hot, bubbled and hissed and gurgled. Then the lid was replaced; the bellows soughed and whistled, and when ten minutes later a thin iron rod was dipped into the molten liquid, all saw hanging on its end a yellow drop.

'Ready!' cried the alchemist.

The pot was now removed from the furnace and allowed to cool. Then before the astounded spectators, there fell from it, sparkling and resounding on the earthen floor, a bar of gold. The alchemist pointed dramatically, and exclaimed:—

'Solve mihi hunc syllogismum!'

'Unheard of! Incredible! Against all the laws of nature and of logic!' murmured Marliani in stupefaction.

The face of Galeotto was white, his eyes glowed with the fire of inspiration, and looking up to heaven, he cried:—

'Laudetur Deus in æternum!Praise God in eternity who deigns to give part of his infinite power unto us, the most abject of his creatures.'

The gold was tested with sulphuric acid. It proved to be purer than the finest of Hungary or Arabia. The company pressed about the venerable philosopher, congratulating him, and wringing his hands. Il Moro took him aside.

'You serve me in fidelity and truth, Messer Galeotto?'

'I would I had more lives than one, that I might dedicate them all to your Excellency,' replied the alchemist.

'Then, Galeotto, beware lest any of the other princes——'

'Illustrissimo, if there be one of them who shall get evena scent of it, have me hanged for a hound.' And after a pause he added, bowing very low, 'I would pray of your Excellency——'

'What? Again?'

'God is my witness, 'tis for the last time.'

'How much?'

'Five thousand ducats.'

The duke reflected, reduced the sum by a thousand, and promised. It was now late; Madonna Beatrice might be anxious; the company hastened to take their leave, each one receiving from the alchemist a fragment of the new-made gold. Only Leonardo remained behind.

When they were alone Galeotto said to him, 'Well, Master, what think you of my experiment?'

'The gold was in the rods,' replied Leonardo dryly.

'What rods? What do you mean, Sir?'

'The rods with which you stirred the molten metal. I saw all.'

'Did you not yourself examine all my utensils?'

'These rods were not those we examined.'

'Not those! Master, permit me——'

'Have I not told you I saw everything?' repeated Leonardo with a smile. 'Be not obstinate, Galeotto. The gold was concealed in hollow rods tipped with wood. When the wooden ends were consumed in the molten mass, the gold fell into it.'

The old man's legs shook; over his face spread a look at once abject and pathetic. Leonardo touched him on the shoulder.

'Fear not, Messer Galeotto, none shall know. I am no tale-bearer.'

The impostor seized his hand feverishly and cried:—

'You will not betray me?'

'No. I wish you no ill. But, Messer Galeotto, why these frauds?'

'Oh, Messer Leonardo,' cried the other, and immediately the boundless despair in his eyes was transfigured by a flash of hope, 'I swear to you by God, that if I seem to have practised deception, 'tis but for the welfare of the duchy, forthe triumph of science, and because my deception shall endure but a brief space. For, Messer Leonardo, truth it is that I have verily found the philosopher's stone. I do not assert that I have it yet in my possession, but I know that it already exists. That is to say, it as good as exists; for I have found the way, and you know that the way is everything. Three or four more experiments, and lo! it is accomplished. What was I to do, Messere? Is not the discovery of so grand a truth justification for so small a deception?'

'Nay, Messer Galeotto,' replied Leonardo gravely, 'to what purpose would you play with me at blind-man's-buff? You know right well, even as I know, that the transmutation of metals is a baseless dream: that there is no philosopher's stone, nor can be one. Alchemy, necromancy, black magic, all these sciences not founded on mathematics and exact experiment are delusion or deception—flags of charlatans, swelled but by the bellying of the wind, after which runs the gaping herd, applauding it knows not what.'

His eyes round and bright with astonishment, the alchemist hung on the lips of the master, and when Leonardo stopped he did not reply. Presently, however, he nodded his head intelligently and winked.

'Ah! ah! Messer Leonardo, but this will not serve. Am I not of the initiated? And do we not all know that thou thyself art the prince of alchemists, the possessor of the most recondite mysteries of nature, the new Hermes Trismegistus, the new Prometheus.'

'I?'

'Thou thyself, Master.'

'Call you this jesting, Messer Galeotto?'

'Contrariwise. 'Tis you, Messer Leonardo, who would jest. How astute and impenetrable you are! In my time I have seen many who were jealous of their secrets of science, never an one like you.'

Leonardo looked at him searchingly; he strove in vain to be angry. He smiled involuntarily.

'Do you seriously believe in these arts?' he asked.

'Do I believe in them? Messere, if God Himself came to me hither at this moment and said to me: "Galeotto, there is no philosopher's stone," I should answer him: "Lord, even as it is true that thou hast created me, so is it true that there is that stone, and that I shall find it."'

After this Leonardo disputed no more, but listened with interest to the speculations of the alchemist. Presently the talk swerved to the possible assistance of the Devil in the occult sciences; the old man, however, would none of this. He declared the Devil to be the weakest, the most miserable, the most impotent of all the creations of God; he himself had faith only in the human mind, and believed that to science all things were possible.

Then suddenly, without any consciousness of an abrupt transition, and as if playing with some agreeable and diverting recollection, he asked whether Messer Leonardo had frequent apparitions of elemental spirits. And when his interlocutor confessed to never having seen any, Galeotto again refused to believe him; and with relish told how the salamander has a body a finger and a half in length, spotted, thin, and harsh, while the sylphide is blue as the sky, transparent, and ethereal. He spoke also of the nymphs and undines that live in the rivers and the sea; of the gnomes, pygmies, and underground dwarfs; of the durgans and dryads, dwellers in trees, and the rare spirits that inhabit precious stones.

'I cannot convey to you,' concluded Galeotto, 'how beneficent and exquisite are these genii!'

'Why, then,' asked Leonardo, 'do they appear only to the elect?'

'Would you have them appear to all? They dread vulgar persons, libertines, materialists, drunkards, and gluttons. They affect the innocent, the childlike, simple ones. They live only where there is no malice nor cunning. Timid and fearful as gazelles they take refuge from human eyes in their native elements.'

And a smile of infinite tenderness illuminated the old man's face, as if at the memory of long-ago dreams.

'What a charming old fool!' thought Leonardo, no longer scornful, but ready to simulate participation in any scientific absurdity to please this man, whom now he treated with affectionate consideration, like a child.

They parted as friends; and the moment he was alone the alchemist plunged into new experiments with the oil of Venus.

All this time Monna Sidonia, the mistress of the house, and Cassandra sat before an immense open fireplace in the room below Messer Galeotto's laboratory. Their supper of coarse vegetables was stewing on the hearth, and the old woman with unvarying motion of her wrinkled finger spun the linen thread with her distaff. Cassandra watched her idly, and thought:—

'Always the same thing. To-day as yesterday, to-morrow as to-day. The cricket chirps, the mouse squeaks, the spindle hums. There is a crackling in the dry sticks on the hearth, and I smell turnips and garlic.'

Presently the old woman began prating in her usual way; saying that she was not rich, whatever the people might say about her money-pot buried in the vineyard. That was all an idle tale. The truth was, she was ruining herself for Galeotto and his niece. She had too much heart, that was it, or she would never keep them, the two of them hanging on to her neck like a pair of millstones. And of a truth Cassandra was no longer a child, and ought to be thinking of the future; her uncle would die some day or other, and leave her as poor as Job. She might at least get a husband. She might at least accept the hand of the rich horsedealer at Abbiategrasso, who had the folly to run after her. He was not young, but he was a staid, God-fearing man without any bees in his bonnet; had a good business and a mill, and an olive-press. What more did she want?

Cassandra listened in silence; but tedium sat on her like a nightmare; seized her by the throat and suffocated her. She felt an irresistible longing to break out into rebellious weeping and rage.

Monna Sidonia fished in the pot for a succulent turnip, mashed it up with grape-juice, and munched with apparent appetite; but the young girl, submissive though with growing desperation, stretched herself and interlaced her fingers behind her hair. After supper the old woman, like a wearied Fate, nodded over her distaff, and her talk died down into disconnected mumbling. Then Cassandra drew forth her talisman, and the firelight shining through its purple depths, she studied the figure of the naked god, and her heart filled with love for the beautiful Hellenic deities.

She sighed heavily, concealed her amulet, and said diffidently:—

'Monna Sidonia! to-night at Barco di Ferrara and at Benevento there is the gathering. Aunt! good kind aunt! we will not dance. We will go only to see. We will come back at once. I will do whatever you wish; I will even try to get a present out of the horsedealer—only be kind for once. Let us fly! let us fly together—now—at once!'

And the girl's eyes sparkled hungrily. The beldame surveyed her curiously; then her blue and withered lips parted in a smile which displayed her one tusk-like yellow tooth, and her face lit up with a hideous joy.

'Ah, you wish it? Very much, do you? You have caught the taste? Was there ever such a girl? For my part, I am ready to fly every night. But see you here, Cassandra, you take the sin on your own soul. To-night I wasn't even thinking of it. I'll do it only for your sake, out of my too great goodness of heart.'

Without haste the old woman went about the room, shut the shutters, stuffed rags into the chinks, locked all doors, poured water on the fire, lighted a black candle endued with magical properties, and from an iron locker took an earthen vessel containing a pungent ointment. She made show of being deliberate and sensible, but her hands shook as though she were drunk, her sunken eyes were at times turbid, at times they sparkled like coals. Cassandra had dragged the two great troughs used for the kneading of dough into the centre of the room.

Now Monna Sidonia stripped herself, and sitting astride of a broomstick on one of the troughs, she smeared herself with the ointment which she had taken from the locker. A hideous odour filled the room; the medicament, infallible for making witches fly, was composed of poisonous lettuce, hemlock, nightshade, mandragora, poppy, henbane, serpent's blood, and the fat of unchristened children.

Cassandra could not look at the hag's deformity. At the eleventh hour she recoiled.

'What are you about?' grumbled the crone; 'are you going to leave me to fly alone? Come—make haste. Take your clothes off.'

'All right. But, Monna Sidonia, put the light out. I can't do it in the light.'

'Bah! what modesty! Never mind, there'll be no modesty on the mountain.'

She blew out the candle, making the sign of the cross with the left hand for the pleasing of the devil, her master.

Then the girl rapidly undressed, knelt in the trough, and smeared herself.

In the darkness the old woman was heard mumbling the senseless disconnected words of an incantation.

'Emen Hetan, Emen Hetan, Palu, Baalberi, Astaroth, help us. Agora, Agora, Patrisa, come and help us!'

Cassandra eagerly snuffed the strong odour of the unguent. Her skin burned; her head swam; delicious thrills ran down her back. Red and green interlacing circles swam before her eyes, she heard the abandoned stridulous voice of Monna Sidonia as if from afar.

'Garr-r! Garr-r-r! Up! Up! Don't knock your head! We fly! We fly!'

Forth from the chimney-top flew Cassandra astride on the soft hide of a black goat. Ravished, panting, with exaltation filling her soul, she screamed like a young swift, plunging for the first time through the blue air.

'Garr-r! Up! Up! We fly! We fly!'

The deformed and withered body of Aunt Sidonia flew beside her on a broomstick; her thin hair streaming in the blast.

'To the north! To the north!' yelled the hag, managing her broomstick like a horse.

Cassandra burst into peals of laughter, remembering poor Messer Leonardo and his cumbrous mechanism.

Now she ascended, and the black clouds rolled together beneath her; now they burned blue in the flashes of jagged lightning. But above the clouds the sky was clear. A full moon shone, huge and round as a millstone, and so near she could touch it with her hand. Affrighted, she guided the goat downwards again, and he plunged with her headlong into the void.

'Devil of a wench, you'll break your neck,' screamed Sidonia.

Now they were skimming so close to the ground that theybrushed the rustling meadow-grasses; will-o'-the-wisps guided their course past old tree-trunks gleaming with rottenness; while the owl, the bittern, and the goatsucker mourned plaintively among the reeds.

Presently they flew across the summits of the Alps, their icy spars glittering in the moonshine; and again they dropped to the surface of the sea. Cassandra, scooping water in her hand, tossed it in the air, and rejoiced in the sapphire splashes.

Momently their pace increased, and they came up with and distanced fellow-travellers; a sorcerer with long grey hair, in a tub; an ecclesiastic on a muck-rake, red, gorbellied, jovial as Silenus himself; a golden-haired, blue-eyed lass on a broom, a young and red-haired vampire on a grunting porker, and a hundred others.

'Whence come you, little sister?' cried Sidonia, and twenty voices answered her.

'From Candia! From the Isles of Greece! From Valenza! From the Brocken! From Mirandola, Benevento, from the caves and the fjords!'

'Whither go ye?'

'To Biterne! To Biterne! For the marriage of the great goat, the Buck of Biterne. Fly! Fly! Haste to the supper.' And they passed over the dreary plain like a cloud of rooks on a whirlwind. The moon shone purple, and against it in the distance gleamed the cross upon a village church. The vampire hurled herself against it, tore away the cross and the great bell, casting them far off into the swamp, where they sank with a despairing clang. The vampire barked like a joyous dog, and the flaxen-headed lass on the cantering broomstick clapped her little hands with glee.

The moon was now hidden by the clouds. Torches flared with flames of green and blue, and upon the chalky plateau the black shadows of the dancing witches spread and wheeled and interlaced and disentwined.

'Garr-r! Garr-r! 'Tis the Sabbath! 'Tis the Sabbath! From right to left! From right to left!'

They flew and they danced in their endless thousands like the withered and perishing autumn leaves. In their midstsat Hircus Nocturnus, the great he-goat, enthroned upon the mountain.

'Garr-r! Garr-r-r. Praise to the great Becco Notturno! The Buck of Biterne! The Buck of Biterne! Our wars are ended! Rejoice ye and rejoice!'

There was a screeching of pipes made of dead men's bones; the drum, stretched with the skin of the hanged, was beaten with the tail of a wolf. A loathsome stew was boiling in a vast cauldron, not seasoned with salt, for salt is abhorrent to the lord of that place.

Black were-cats were there dancing, lustful and emerald-eyed; slender maidens white as lilies; a shapeless capering incubus, grey as a spider; shuddering nuns; on a low bank, a white-bodied, plump, gigantic witch, with a stupid and good-natured face, was suckling two newly-hatched demons, already greedy and malicious. Three-year-old children, not yet admitted to the revelry, were feeding herds of toads, dressed as cardinals, with the sacred Host in their claws.

Sidonia and Cassandra joined the dance which sucked them in and whirled them away like a howling storm.

'Garr-r-r! from right to left! From right to left!'

Long wet whiskers like those of a walrus swept Cassandra's neck; a thin winding tail tickled her face, she was impudently pinched and bitten, hateful endearments were whispered in her ears. She made no resistance; the wilder the merrier; the more shameless the more intoxicating.

Suddenly petrifaction fell on the assembly; all voices were hushed, all movement was arrested. From the black throne, surrounded by terror, where sat the great Unknown, came a dull hoarse roar, like the growl of an earthquake.

'Receive you my gifts! To the weak, my strength; my pride to the humble; to the poor-spirited, my wisdom; to the afflicted, my joy. Receive my gifts!'

Then an old man of venerable aspect, his grey beard flowing—one of the fathers of the Holy Inquisition, at the same time patriarch of the sorcerers, and celebrant of the Black Mass, chanted in solemn tones:—

'Sanctificetur nomen tuum per universum mundum et libera nos ab omni malo!Be in awe, ye faithful ones, and fall prostrate!'

They knelt, falling on their knees with a crash, and as from one voice resounded the Sorcerer's Confession:—

'Credo in Deum patrem Luciferum, qui creavit cœlum et terram. Et in filium suum Beelzebub.'

When the last sounds had died away, and there was renewed stillness, the same voice of the Unknown, deafening as an earthquake cried:—

'Bring hither my bride—my stainless dove!'

And the old man with the flowing beard inquired:—

'What is the name of thy bride, thy stainless dove?'

'Madonna Cassandra! Madonna Cassandra!' roared the great voice.

Hearing the pronouncement of her name, the girl's blood froze in her veins. Her hair stood erect.

'Madonna Cassandra! Cassandra!' rang the cry from the crowd. 'Where hideth she? Where is our sovereign?Ave Arcisponsa Cassandra!'

She hid her face and would have fled; but bony fingers, claws, antennæ, and probosces, and the hairy legs of spiders seized her; and dragged her trembling before the throne. The rank odour of a goat, and a chill as of death smote her; she closed her eyes in dread. Then he upon the throne cried: 'Come!'

Her head hanging, she saw at her feet a fiery cross gleaming through the darkness. She made a supreme effort, took a step forward, and raised her eyes.

Then a miracle took place.

The goat's skin fell from him as the scales from a sloughing snake; she was face to face with Dionysus the Olympian; thyrsis and vine-branch in his hands, a smile of eternal joy upon his lips, the panther at his feet pawing at the grapes.

And theSabbato diabolicochanged into the divine orgies of Bacchus; the witches became Mænads, the monstrous demons were kindly goat-footed Satyrs; the chalk rocks were colonnades of shining marble, lighted by the sun, and between them in the distance was the purple sea. The radiant gods of Hellas, surrounded by an aureole of fire, were gathering in the clouds, and the Satyrs and the Bacchantes, beating their timbrels, cutting their breasts with knives, squeezing the grape-juice into goblets of gold, and mingling it with their blood, danced and circled and sang:—

'Glory to Dionysus! Glory to Dionysus! The gods have risen! Glory to the eternal gods!'

And Bacchus, the ever young, opened his arms to Cassandra. His voice was like thunder, shaking earth and sky as he cried:—

'Come hither my bride! my stainless dove!'

And she sank into the god's embrace.

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