endearments of angels leave vestiges thus ruinous? No, they are prints of hell's footsteps. Hark! heard you that cry of sorrow? Benedetto's parents stretch forth their wasted arms from the grave, and require their child from me. Ah, say not I have murdered him.' He then sank upon the bed, hid his face beneath the clothes, and lay breathless and panting, as if in dread of instant detection.

His horror and remorse endured for hours, in the extremity of tumultuous perturbation; they then sunk into more silent anguish. Thus he lay till midnight; when rising from his bed, he bade Francesco follow him, and stept lightly to the secret chamber, with an apparent composure, which might have deceived the most penetrating observer, and persuaded the most skilful physician that reason had regained its seat in his soul. Assisted by Francesco, he conveyed all his books of necromancy, and magical apparatus, into the garden, and formed them into a kind of funeral pile; then seizing a brand from the fire, in a moment the pyre was wrapt in fierce flames, that soon reduced it to a heap of dead ashes. During the conflagration, his tortures appeared suspended, and his mind to have recovered, in some degree, its serenity; but, as the flames expired, remorse resumed her stern empire over him; and he exclaimed, in a tone of frantic despair, I will strew these glowing ashes on my head! I will mingle them with my tears, in the cup which consolation reaches to me, and drink them off, to my perdition.

Drooping and exhausted, at length, Pietro collected the ashes, and bore them to his chamber. The corpse of Benedetto he filled with the most precious spices, and clothed it in a robe of white and silver. On the second day, it was interred in the church of St. Oliveta; and a perennial mass was established for the repose of the spirit.

The day after Benedetto's burial, the unhappy Pietro confessed him-self to the Abbot of St. Oliveta, and received absolution of his sins, but distrusted its efficacy. He obtained from the Abbot permission to be interred at the feet of Benedetto, and to have their sad history engraved on their sepulchre. For this, he devised the tenth of his property to the monastery, and bequeathed the residue to Francesco. Contented on these two points, the miserable Pietro grew more composed; he ordered himself to be borne in his couch to his library, and placed before the crucifix, on which he kept his eyes ever fixed, entreating from it some signal of heaven's mercy. He took neither nourishment nor medicine; never turned his look from the image; nor opened his closelycompressed lips, but to entreat some sign of salvation.

Towards evening, as he revived from a state between a doze and a trance, and re-commenced his faint, but earnest supplication for some token of divine mercy, the wooden image thrice inclined its head. The last breath of Pietro's life, which had waited but for this blessing, exhaled in a transport of joy.-He exclaimed, God has forgiven me! and closed his eyes for ever.

His corpse was deposited in the church of St. Oliveta, beside that of his beloved Benedetto. A superb monument was erected over their grave, on which their dreadful catastrophe was inscribed as a warning to posterity.*

Swinburne saw the stone in 1777. Vide Swinburne's Journey through both the Sicilies, from the year 1777 to 1780, Vol. III.

Already had experience taught Francesco, that the enjoyment of riches was at some distance from their possession. Ever since the death of Benedetto, he had been the virtual possessor of Pietro's property; and yet he had not once dared to indulge himself with a sight of his Enemonde. He was compelled to watch over his wealth, like a dragon over subterranean gold. He dared not leave the bed of his dying kinsman, lest the cowled legacy-hunters, who crowd about a sick man like crows round distempered cattle, should come between him and his expectations, and intercept his inheritance. He durst not, in the presence of his expiring relative, manifest the smallest sign of the inward satisfaction and triumph with which the prospect of independence inspired him, lest the offended pride of the testator should instigate him to revoke his act in the youth's favour, and, by too keen an appetite for his prey, he might thus lose it for ever. Scarcely was Pietro immured in the tomb, ere Francesco burst, like a spring long held back from its proper bent, from the dreary constraint in which he had been retained, and hastened to his lovely Enemonde; his bosom swelling with exultation, and his eyes flashing with the flame of joy, as the summer sky with playful lightnings.

It was as if a wall, that reached from earth to heaven, had been removed from between them; as if both had just disengaged themselves from vows of eternal chastity; as if each had escaped the hands of the executioner. Francesco and Enemonde rushed into each other's arms. As if on that point only where they stood, was vital air to be inhaled ; as if on that point only was earth below, and heaven above, they stood there, fixed and immoveable. As if they feared that, at any the smallest interstice, misfortune should insert her flaming sword, to divide them, or place immeasurable wastes between their meeting, they stood close conjoined, and inseparable as tablets of marble. Words seemed too mean a dress for their emotions of exultation; too incompetent representatives of their transports, too dim a medium to convey their sentiments. Looks and sighs, close embraces and warm kisses, extatic murmurs, and fervent caresses, are the rhetoric of love; and, with all these tropes at their command, they were at no loss to express their mutual rapture.

Long held their joy, ere words were thought of; and when they recurred to them, it was but at intervals, when a solitary monosyllable would steal out from amid a crowd of kisses.

"And art thou really mine," said Enemonde, "joy of my life? once more assure me that thou art, and confirm my felicity. Is every impediment removed? Does fortune no longer withhold her consent to our union?"

"Every obstruction is levelled with the ground," rejoined Francesco, 66 every chain is loosed from us. I am thine, thou mine, as sure as joy is in thy arms, or misery without them. Iron chests crammed with gold are mine, are thine; fields and vineyards are mine, and thine; all that can banish care, or ensure pleasure, belongs to me and to thee, source and partner of my happiness!"

"Doubtless, thou hast merited every thing."

"Indeed I have. Didst thou but know, Enemonde, what I have achieved since I saw thee!"

"I dare swear, the labours of Hercules."

"Little less believe me. What sayest thou to my having sworn never to become thy husband during the life of Benedetto?"

""Tis impossible thou couldst have forsworn the possession of thy Enemonde."

66

May you never be mine, if I did not! I confessed my passion for thee to Pietro, and laboured to win from his liberality a nuptial present, that might set us above the restraints of poverty. He raged, as if I had revealed to him a sacrilege: he threatened to expel me from his house, to make Benedetto a monk, and to bequeath his treasures to a monastery he deafened me with reproaches of my ingratitude; rent my heart with lamentations of his miserable destiny; and so staggered my understanding, that I besought pardon, and received it only on condition of this oath, which was followed by another, from the observance of which his death has released me. On this, he led me to a secret apartment, unveiled a magical apparatus, promised me dominion over the spirits of the higher and nether worlds, and engaged to initiate me in all the mysteries of necromancy. The life of Benedetto now stood between thee and me; my soul was tost in all the agitation of jealousy, and I wandered about like an unhappy exile, far from all that was dear to me. Thy possession was to be obtained but by a desperate act, and to that I strained all my faculties, and goaded on my resolution."

66

Nothing less, I suppose, than my murder?" said Enemonde. "That stroke I reserved in case of your perfidy," said Francesco. "I found by chance, or rather love led me to the discovery, an old bear's-skin, which had probably been used by some scholar of Barliardo at a carnival. An old monk, deeply versed in chemistry, had taught me to make fire-works, which should emit thick smoke, cast balls of flame, and make loud explosions.

"I loosened from its frame one of the windows of the mysterious chamber which looks into the garden, but left it apparently firm in its station; I opened the magic volume in a part which contained an invocation to an infernal spirit. Depending on Benedetto's curiosity for the success of my design, I unclosed the panel, which conceals the door leading to the secret apartment, in such a manner, that the most inattentive eye must have remarked it. When we were at mass, Benedetto was accustomed to amuse himself in the library. On the fifth morning of my preparation this was performed, when stealing unobserved by Pietro from the church, I clothed myself in the bear's-skin, and having provided all my implements, concealed myself in the garden under the loosened window. Justly had I reasoned on the boy's curiosity; it drew him into the mysterious room, and to the altar, where he read the open page of the magic volume. While he was thus employed, I flung a fire-work into the apartment, which filled it with thick vapour; I then forced in the window with a violent crash, rushed in, and finding him in a swoon, strangled him with a pair of red-hot pincers."

Enemonde tore herself from the arms of Francesco, and flew to the tabernacle for protection as if a demon pursued her. For some minutes she hid her face in the cover of the altar; at length, raising her head, she exclaimed," and is it then true?"" What," cried Francesco, with alarm and agitation.

"That joy can be so near a-kin to madness," said Enemonde. "Thus was I liberated from my oath, was the future heir of Pietro, and thy husband," said Francesco. "Was there any other road open to me? Were there any other means in nature to liberate me from the slavery into which I had been decoyed? Had I murdered the boy in any other way suspicion of the fact must have fallen on me, and instead of attaining happiness in thy arms, I must have rushed to an infamous death upon the scaffold; but now the suspicious vigilance even of the priesthood is baffled, for before what tribunal can they cite a demon?" Francesco, art thou really sober?" said Enemonde.

66

"Can intoxication preserve such coherence?" said Francesco. "I threw off my disguise, returned to the church, and thence with Barliardo to his mansion. What had happened was soon revealed to him, and his distempered imagination prepared him for my delusion. He fancied the boy had unconsciously summoned a fiend, who, finding him without the circles, had strangled him. He called himself Benedetto's murderer, raved and wept, and gave himself up to remorse and despair, till nature could no longer support his anguish, and he sank into languor and despondency. He lay motionless before the crucifix, and spent his last moments in asking a sign of heavenly forgiveness. My weakness at length moved me to compassion for the old swindler, who would have given me a book, filled with falsehood and jargon, as a recompense for the loss of thy living and substantial treasures; I mounted within the hollow image while he was in a doze, and moved its head thrice as he awoke. Pacified with this pledge of salvation, he gave up the ghost, and his soul took its flight to hell or heaven."

"Strange, that delight should operate so upon our senses! May I own, without exciting thy laughter, Francesco, that thy love accents knell in my ears as if thou hadst really murdered the good Pietro, and Benedetto, the sweetest boy that ever gamboled over the face of nature.”

"Thy ears are faithful interpreters: I have murdered both; but it was to obtain thee. For thee, Enemonde, I murdered the innocent Benedetto; for thee have I exiled myself from heaven, and insured for myself certain perdition; and now say, if obduracy to conviction will permit thee, that I have not deserved all thou canst bestow on me." "If thou hast done this," said Enemonde, "if it can be true"Trifle not with my impatience!" answered Francesco, I have done it, it is true.

"Then art thou the most execrable monster that ever hell brought forth for the destruction of man."

"So be it! In thy arms I wait my regeneration to humanity." "If ever they enfold thee, may it be their eternal lot to fondle devils! Ha! shall I live under one roof with thee, thou murderer of innocence? Shall I kiss lips that spoke honied words to him, whose loved flower their breath has blasted? Shall I suffer hands about my neck that have been embrued in the blood of the gentle Benedetto? Cast me into the escargatory* of hell, where crawl un

An escargatory is a magazine, or nursery for snails, frequent in monasteries, situate in inland countries, where the scarcity of fish reduces the religious, of both sexes, to feed, during their solemn fasts, on those reptiles.

numbered toads and adders; there let hunger whip me till I devour their poisonous flesh, and thirst scorch me till I lick the slime from their madid skins; I would rather live an eternity in that den, than one hour in thy arms.

"Enemonde, I hope present surprise over-rules thy settled purpose. I hope you remember your oath to be mine, were I a mass of depravities and abominations."

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Though that vow, which escaped me in the phrensy of passion, had reached the presence of God, and perdition hung over me, I would violate it. Did'st thou think, monster, the blood of innocence a grateful sacrifice to the heart of a woman? Didst thou think I would lull thee to sleep on my bosom; thee, whom the executioner and the wheel shall consign to damnation ? Away, murderer ! roll Alps and Apennines betwixt us; Almighty heaven, place immensity between us ! Away, wretch! for whom my tortured imagination can find no adequate term of abhorrence; away, nor infect the ambient air with thy poisons." "Enemonde ! listen to me.'

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My ears are henceforth deaf to thy blandishments, and thy lovemurmurs shall sound like the convulsive rattle of thy dying victim." Enemonde, cease thus to trifle with me! Have I not done all this to obtain thee? O thou ineffably beloved, speak comfort and consolation to me. Say thou art mine; art thou not the price of my perdition?"

May an opened grave be my nuptial couch, a putrid corpse my bridegroom, sooner than thee; thou Gorgon to my sight! Hence, murder me not with thy looks."

66 Observe your oath, Enemonde? give me my recompense."

"No other recompense can I give thee than curses, contempt, and eternal hatred. As sure"-she snatched a knife from the table, and unloosing her long tresses, cut them off-" as sure as these locks will never more adorn my head, so sure I enter into the most rigid cloister; there to expiate, by severest penance, the crime of having loved a monster who has disgraced humanity."

"Ha! is this my recompense? But still I love thee, and thus I shorten thy sufferings.”

He attempted to wrest the knife from her hands, but in vain: she threw it out of the window, and cried for help against murder. Francesco fled with precipitation. As if the girl had revealed his guilt to the whole city, he ran affrighted and goaded by avenging furies through Salerno, rushed to the sea-shore, mounted the highest summit of a chain of rocks, and flung himself down headlong. Where he should descend, consternation had left him no power to consider or inquire; he fell on a shoal, that but just rose above the surface of the water. His vital parts remained uninjured from the fall, but a sharp angle of the rock, which grazed him in his descent, had torn his left cheek from the bone, which it had broken; and both his legs and one arm were fractured. Death, into whose soft downy arms he meant to sink, had placed a bed of stone to receive him, strewn with tortures. For some time Francesco's crushed frame lay void of life and feeling; then the trembling pulse recovered a feeble motion, sudden spasms shook his nerves, and his respiration pressed laboriously through his