"I thought that figure had had a mask on."
"Not a bit of him," said the priest; "there is no occasion for him to mask himself. Take him as nature has made him, and he is already a mask and a monster. If ever there was a spirit of bell upon earth, this Berecynth, as they call him, is that spirit. But it is drawing late; will you put up with the accommodations of our cloister until you have provided yourself with a lodging elsewhere?"
The young foreigner declined this invitation, chiefly on account of the very different opinions which each of them entertained respecting the subject of their late discussion; and they parted mutually dissatisfied.
Chap. III.
The Robbers' Den.
The young Florentine, who had met in a miserable hour the funeral of her who was to have been his bride, rushed like a mad man through the city gates, and took his course in reckless haste through wood and wold. When he found himself in the open country, many were the bitter curses he poured forth against the world and his own fate; and, tearing his hair, he again dashed onwards, unconscious whither he was going. He spurred against the wind, which blew upon him with the freshness of night, as if to cool the burning fever of his cheeks. At length his horse, stumbling and overdriven, fairly sank under him, and he was compelled to continue his career on foot. He knew not where he was, or what he would be at: only, encompassed by the black infinitude, he prayed despairingly for death. "Oh, death, take me to thyself, and still the beatings of this stormy heart! Would that I might this moment expire in mortal pangs, so that my place might know me no more in the light of to-morrow's sun, and that no beam of his might ever again awaken me to the consciousness of my woe. Am I not the most miserable of all living creatures? —and all the more so, because a few hours ago I was the happiest of men. Alas for youthful love, which ends by bringing such bitter disappointment to all the rapturous feelings of the heart!"
The rain, which for some time had been drizzling through the cold air, now began to descend in heavier drops. The youth was already deep in the forest, and no shelter, as far as he knew, was at hand. He began to collect his scattered senses; his anguish grew milder, and tears at last forced themselves from his eyes. His hatred of life became less and less intense, and he felt as if comfort were poured into his troubled soul by the soft voice of the dark sobbing night.
While he stood in suspense, considering whether he should search for his lost horse, or shelter himself from the storm in any hole or cranny he could find, his eye was suddenly caught by a distant light, which, dancing behind bush and dale, appeared to greet him with a friendly glance through the thick darkness. He hastened after the fickle fire, which now vanished and now reappeared. All his faculties and feelings were bound up as if in slumber—his whole being felt as if wrapt in a dream.
The storm was now raging with fearful violence; and after struggling on for some time, almost blinded by the lightning and deafened by the thunder, he found himself close to the light by which he had been attracted. He knocked at the window of a small cottage which stood behind some trees, and begged for admittance and shelter from the inclemency of the elements. A loud hoarse voice answered from within, but the youth could not distinguish the words, for the tempest and the rain and the tossing trees raved so frightfully around him, that no other sound could be distinctly heard.
The door of the cottage entered from the garden, through which, having passed, he was conducted by a female hand along a dark passage into a small chamber, in which there was a lighted lamp and a fire burning on the hearth. In a corner beside the lamp sate a hideous old woman spinning. The young maid who had introduced him busied herself about the fireplace, and kept so moving about that he was unable to obtain a near or correct view of her countenance; while the deafening peals of thunder for a long time rendered any thing like conversation impossible.
"This is a dreadful storm!" said the old woman in a croaking voice,
