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But," I asked, somewhat surprised at this speech, "where is La Fioraja?"

"You will see her before you leave." She closed the door after me.

We crossed a low hall, the ceiling of which was admirably painted in fresco, in the style of the old Tuscan master, Volterrano. In the centre was a sculptured escutcheon. At the end of this hall, a flight of broad marble steps led us to a lofty vaulted chamber, hung with old knightly portraits, which, from their lines of resemblance, and the changing styles of costume, were evidently those of a family which could trace back its ancestry to the days of the Medici. A few master-pieces by the old painters completed the decorations; the only furniture was a marble table, wrought in rich mosaic, and a few stately-looking chairs, which seemed as ancient as the palace itself. A light stood upon the table, behind which a tall mirror doubled the cheerless splendor of the apartment.

I waited some minutes in intense expectation, wondering what mystery had made me its subject. I looked at the table, the pictures-I stepped to the window which opened upon a terrace filled with flowers-and, gazing into the moonlight, was fast losing myself in a labyrinth of conjectures, when I heard a footstep. A side-door opened, and a lady entered, before whose stately beauty I involuntarily made a low reverence. Her dark hair was braided on her head, and clasped by a circlet of small pearls; she wore a rich satin robe, and a single diamond of surpassing lustre glittered on her breast. She came up to me with a smile, and I started back astonished at beholding-La Fioraja! The same, yet how changed! Her pure peasant beauty was heightened into the grace and lofty bearing of a princess; the gleam of the dark eye was firmer-the curve of the red lip prouder, and though the pure, sweet brow was unaltered, it seemed radiant with the invisible halo of thought. She might have been placed with the jewelled dames who looked on us from the walls, (and now, for the first time, I saw their features in her own,) and been honored as the noblest of them all.

"Fioraja !-pardon me, signora !"-I stammered.

"Nay, my friend," said La Fioraja, or the Lady Fiammetta, as she really was, in the same sweet voice as ever, yet without its tone of careless gayety: you must forgive me for this evening's mystery. You now know the secret which I scarcely dared to reveal. This is the palace of my father, Andrea di Lavagna, and I have asked you hither in the hope that you might tell him of the country in which his unfortunate son has

to some knowledge of my poor brother. I am now his only child, and the last of the Lavagnas. It is a bitter thought to my father, that his name, once among the proudest in Genoa, should be extinguished-and he so loved Antonio! Oh, signor, if you know of any comfort for him, Fiammetta di Lavagna will bless you for it!"

"Lady," said I, deeply moved, doubt not that I will do all I may, to serve you. But tell me of your brother."

us.

"Alas, signor, it is a sad story. I was many years younger when Antonio was forced to leave All my father's hopes were fixed on him; he had seen his other children taken from him, one by one, till only were left Antonio, the best and bravest of all, and myself, who was then a child. He had given all his estates in Lombardy and Parma to Antonio's keeping, reserving only this and some other trifling property, for the support of his few remaining years. Antonio was generous and noble-spirited; he could not bear the foreign yoke which was upon Italy: and, stimulated by the remembrance of his heroic ancestor, Fiesco, in an unfortunate hour joined a conspiracy against the government. The terrible fate of the Carbonari, but a few years before hung over him ; but when the band was broken up, and its members seized, he escaped to the Appenines, and, after the most cruel hardships, reached Florence. A day only could he remain with us-he had condemned himself to eternal banishment, and, tearing himself from our embraces, hastened to Leghorn, whence he sailed to America. Our poor father was nearly heart-broken. His property, too, was lost with Antonio's condemnation. The little left us was not enough to provide for our wants, and preserve the last dwelling-place of our ancestors. The two or three servants we retained were faithful to me, and have kept my secret-but, signor, my father does not, must not know that you have seen me as La Fioraja!”

"What, lady! have you thus nobly sacrificed your pride of birth to filial affection, supporting him by the painful alternative of assuming a character far below your station-below the soul you inherit? Oh, lady, this is nobly done; but could you not have spared yourself this experience, which must be hard to bear? Here are paintings, which would bring you gold in abundance."

"Signor," replied Fiammetta, with the old stateliness in her look and tone: "this palace and these paintings are all that is left to the name of Lavagua. They have been inherited from father to son for centuries. They will be the only legacy we can give to Antonio, if he ever returns. I would beg in the streets of Florence, sooner than part with them. They are my own consolationthey remind me that I am of proud and princely

blood. If in the streets and cafès I put on the soul as well as the costume of La Fioraja, here, at least, I feel myself a Lavagna!"

The excited blood rushed to her cheeks and forehead, as she stood with one arm extended towards the rare paintings on the walls. In the silence of the moment, as the loud, rich melody of her voice died away, I could have believed myself existing in that romantic age, whose very spirit seemed to live again in her.

"Let us seek my father; he has been told that a stranger will visit him," she said at length.

I followed her through a vaulted passage, at the end of which she knocked gently at a door. "Euter, my child!" said a voice that trembled with excess of age. We passed into a cheerful, and even luxurious chamber. Vases of rare flowers filled the windows-divans of velvet graced the walls and a lute, curiously carved and inlaid with pearl, lay upon the floor. An old man, whose beard, snowy with eighty winters, fell upon his breast, was seated in a large cushioned chair. Fiammetta, pressing his hand tenderly to her lips, said to him: " This, my father, is the signor of whom I spoke." The old man bowed his head, and faintly beckoned me to advance.

"You are from America, signor, my Fiammetta tells me. My poor Antonio fled to your country. Oh, if you have heard but one word of him, tell it to me. I am old and feeble: I cannot live long-but before I die, I would hear of Antonio, since I may not see him on earth.”

His voice grew indistinct: Fiammetta's face was hid in his bosom, and his tears fell upon her head. How I longed for some angelic messenger -some spirit of earth or air, compelled to my will, to bring tidings of the exile! How I tortured my memory in the vain search for some name or form which might have been their Antonio! Taking the hand of the old man, I knelt beside him and tried to soothe him. I told him that many of the political exiles of Italy had found refuge in America; that some of them had risen to honor; that in my country there were paths of honest life and ambition open to all, and that the generous, manly spirit of his son would be sure to win him friendship and a home. Finally, I promised to seek for him on my return, and send, if possible, some tidings of his fate.

He listened, and his grief seemed quieted; laying his hand on Fiammetta's head, he murmured: "God has still been merciful; he has left me one dear child!" Oh, the unutterable love and devotion which answered from the eyes of that child! "Blessed Virgin!" she cried, "watch over our Antonio, and lead him back to his home and the hearts that are breaking for his loss!"

I joined my tears to their own: that fountain of the heart, which had been early dried to my own sorrow, gushed forth again at the wo of others. I asked and received the old man's blessing, and we rose and departed.

When we again reached the picture-chamber, Fiammetta said, as she gave me her hand at parting: "Forget that Fiammetta di Lavagna lives, when you again see La Fioraja. We have been happier for this interview; may you be able hereafter to make us happier still! "

I wandered slowly back to the Via Vacchereccia, deeply touched with this unexampled instance of filial love and heroic devotion. I wished for gold, for rank, for political power, that I might aid them, and haply restore the exiled Antonio. But I was a poor, powerless wanderer, and could give them but a wander r's syinpathy.

A day or two afterwards I left Florence. In the cafe I again met with La Foraja-the saine bright, artless creature as ever, to all but myself. I took her offered bouquet in silence; this time it was composed of the rarest and richest flowers. My words, at parting, were for the flower-girl, for strangers were near; but my glance was for the descendant of Fiesco. In obedience to the universal custom, I would have made her a parting gift: but she foresaw my intention, and said, in a low, firm voice: "Not to me, signor!" Many a day after that, in toiling through the wintry Appenines, on my pilgrim-way to Rome, did I rest at the foot of an olive or wild fig-tree, and, opening my knapsack, inhale the faded fragrance of the last Tuscan roses I received from her hand.

Two years have passed since then, and I have not found Antonio. Meanwhile, a new freedom is dawning over Italy, and I still trust that he may one day return to Florence-to his old father, and Fiammetta, the princely Fioraja !

My first, o'er earth, soft radiance diffusing,
Inclines the heaven-born mind to heavenly musing;
And erst it was an idol, at whose shrine
Myriads bowed low in Egypt's glowing clime.

My second swiftly moves without control,-
Bright to the eye, as Hope is to the soul.
My whole embellishes, with magic power,
Alike a peasant's cot or prince's tower.

KANOUA, a hermit of Hindoo, had suffered severly, because, after he had vowed himself to the life of a saint, he became desperately enamored of a beautiful girl of inferior caste, whom the laws forbade him to marry. The more sinful it was represented, the stronger became the temptation; according to that powerful law of human nature which impels man to desire most that which is forbidden. After a terrible conflict with himself, he resigned his aspirations after a saintly character, and hid himself in the depths of the forest with his beloved. There she bore him a son, and there she lived four years without seeing a human face beyond her own little circle. Excepting the spiritual conflict, which was now and then renewed within him, the hermit was as happy as Robinson Crusoe might have been, if instead of being waited upon by his man Friday, he had found some gentle, pretty Fayaway. He built his hut under a great bower of verdure, formed by interlacing trees, of luxuriant East Indian growth, through which the sunshine cast a golden glimmer. Gorgeous parrots glanced about in the bright atmosphere, and swarms of bees hummed cheerfully at their work among the flowers. A small river flowed near by, on which sailed troops of dazzling white swans. No sound was heard there, except the buzz of insects, the song of birds, the cry of wild deer, and the voice of the hermit chanting hymns to his gods.

Very beautiful was the boy who grew there alone with nature. He was flexible as an osier, nimble as a fawn, and a whole tropical heaven looked out from his ardent eyes. It was truly an Eden for love and childhood; but the demon Fear cast his shadow there. The poor hermit could not, for any length of time, dispel the idea that he was forfeiting hopes of paradise hereafter, by thus making to himself a paradise below. His eyes melted with tenderness as he gazed on the beautiful child sleeping on the breast of his beautiful mother; then he would turn away and sigh at the thought that for loving them so dearly, he might be obliged to return on earth again in some inferior shape; perhaps in that of a pariah, a goat, or even an ape.

* The lowest caste among the people whose situation in Hindostan is similar to that of the negroes among us.

When the little Manou was three years old, his mother died. The hermit buried her in the silent forest, and then there came over him in his loneliness a renewed desire to be purified from every earthly stain, to rise above every human affection, and become completely absorbed in the contemplation of the Divine Being. But the little one clung to his heart-strings, and tied him to this earth. He resolved to forego extraordinary pilgrimages and penances, until the boy became a man; for the sacred books assured him, that in fulfilling the duties of a father, he was doing something for his own happiness in a future existence; and in this particular their teachings harmonized with the promptings of his own heart. But what if he should die while Manou was still in his childhood? Die without atoning for his human enjoyment by severe penances and mortifications of the body? He shuddered at the possibility of coming into the world again in the form of a pariah or an ape. Thus did a spectral theology haunt his brain, as in various forms it has haunted the brains of thousands. Meanwhile, the friendly old earth carried him on her bosom, and soothed him with murmuring waters, the song of birds, and the prattle of his little Manou.

The hermit's most earnest wish was to have his son renowned as a saint; and in order to keep him perfectly safe from the temptation which had dragged him downward in his own saintly career, he resolved that he should never hear there was such a being in the world as woman. The child pined for his mother at first, but never hearing her name mentioned, he at last forgot her. He spent his youth in gathering wild grain, fruit and flowers, offering sacrifices to the gods according to the instruction of his father, feeding his tame deer, and learning portions of the Vedas by heart. Never coming in contact with any of the stormy passions of life, his countenance was singularly calm and innocent; but in the languid dreaminess of his eye, there was something that indicated latent fire.

Existence passed smoothly and pleasantly with him, till he attained his fifteenth year. At that time it chauced that a portion of the British army, passing across the country to a new destination, came into the neighborhood, and were quietly en*The sacred books of the Hindoos.

153

beautiful Asparas for companions. To have an Aspara sing to me, and smile in my face while she placed flowers in my hair, would not that be divine beatitude?"

The hermit groaned, and called his son to their morning sacrifices. The youth performed all his duties with redoubled zeal, but he was evidently absorbed with the one idea that had taken possession of him. He lingered about the grove where he had heard the flute, and often waited there for hours. When sunlight gleamed through the foliage, he hoped it was the golden-haired Aspara. When shadows floated over the ground, he thought the beautiful objects of his vision were hovering near him, though unseen. He gathered up the flowers, which the maiden had dropped among the bushes, and reverently preserved them in baskets of moss. He said their souls had gone away and become sweet sounds. Perhaps they would come to him when he was a Gandharva, and when he breathed them forth again in heavenly tones, they would become flowers far more beautiful than they had been. Men would call them fragrant and graceful, but only the flowernymphs and the music-spirits would know that their fragrance was a song.

Day by day, he ate less, and his dark eyes became larger and more luminous. The maiden, whom he supposed to be a nymph, was always in his dreams. Again and again, he asked, "Why will not my soul go out of this body, that I may become a Gandharva?"

At last, by starvation and intense longing, he wasted away and died. The old hermit buried him tenderly, and on the grave of his innocent and beloved child, he shed his last tear, and struggled with his last human emotion. He did not know that the poetic, loving, intense spirit of the child carried with him all his remembrances of moonlit groves, and dream-music, and flower-nymphs, and performed another human pilgrimage in the form of Mozart, before it became a Gandharva.

On himself, he felt that the greatest of Hindoo afflictions had fallen; for he had now no child to offer funeral sacrifices for him, when he departed from the body; and this his creed taught him was essential to the future welfare of his soul. But he meekly accepted this destiny as a punishment he deserved. 46 Nothing remains for me now," he said, "but severe penance for my sins, and a remote hope that, by complete annihilation of the body, I may finally attain to complete absorption in the Divine Mind, and thus remain in immortal paradise." He made terrible vows of self-torture, and fulfilled them. Day and night he stood on tiptoe without food. In summer he exposed himself to the hot sunshine, and in winter he lived in the water. Finally, he made a vow to walk a thousand miles with his arms perpetually stretched upward. But before he had half fulfilled his task, the poor abused body fell down exhausted, and strangers hid it in the earth.