in black ringlets over her face; she braided it back with her long delicate fingers; at last she raised herself upright and, heaving a profound sigh, opened her eyes wide.
She gazed upon Antonio as if she saw him not; she shook her head, and, grasping the golden tassels that hung down from the top of the bed, she raised herself upon her feet, and stood, a tall slender form, surrounded by purple shadows; she then advanced a few steps towards the youth, who gave way as she approached, and with a childlike expression of surprise, laying her hand upon his shoulder, she smiled graciously, and said, in a gentle voice, Antonio!"
The youth overpowered by a crowd of mixed emotions—fear, astonishment, and delight blending with the profoundest pity—knew not what to do—whether he should rush to embrace her, fall at her feet, or yield up his soul in a passion of tears. That was the very same tone which he so often before heard, and which his heart was never able to resist. "Thou livest!" he exclaimed, in a voice choked by the swelling feelings of his heart.
The sweet smile which was spreading from her pale lips over her cheeks and eyes, suddenly disappeared, and was succeeded by a fixed expression of the deepest and most unutterable anguish. Antonio could not sustain her look; he covered his face with his hand, and cried out, "Art thou a spirit?"
The apparition came nearer him, and, removing his arm from before his face, said, in a soft quivering voice, "Nay, look upon me—I am not dead, but neither am I alive. Reach me the saucer yonder."
A fragrant liquid stood in the crystal dish; he handed it to her with trembling hand: she put it to her lips, and swallowed it in slow draughts. "Alas! my poor Antonio," said she, "I borrow earthly strength from this cup merely that I may reveal to you a most hellish deed, and entreat you to assist in restoring me to that repose from which I have been so unnaturally torn, and which I long to return to with all the longings of my soul."
She had sunk down in an arm-chair, and Antonio placed himself at her feet. "The arts of hell," continued she, "have apparently aroused me from the sleep of death. The man whom I, in my inexperience, worshipped as an apostle, is, let me tell you, one of the lowest of the spirits of perdition. To him I am indebted for this dread semblance of life. He loves me, he says—Oh! how I shrank from him in horror as soon as my eyes, opened from their death-sleep, recognised him! I sleep, I breathe, I live, and the monster promises that my life shall continue, provided I will give myself up to him with my whole heart, and become his bride within the secrecy of these mysterious walls. But oh! Antonio, how heavy each hated word of his falls upon my soul. All my passionate longings for death are counteracted by his infernal art. Was it not dreadful for my soul, already in its place of rest, and beginning to develope new intuitions, to be torn back so cruelly from its mansions of repose? My body had become strange to me, and I looked upon it as a hateful thing. Like a slave who had been freed, I came back to fetters and a dungeon. Assist me, my faithful one, assist me to break through these accursed spells."
"How?" cried Antonio; "God in heaven! what must I endure? Have I again found thee? and canst thou not tarry with us in the land of the living! Wilt thou not come and live with thy parents and me?"
" 'Tis impossible," cried Crescentia, her paleness waxing of a yet more ashen hue. "Ah, life! —who would ever wish for life who had once parted from it? Thou, my poor Antonio, canst not conceive the longing, the love, the rapture with which I desire death, and pray for it to come. In God's bosom I am restored to my parents, and there I love thee and them with a freer and more enduring love. But alas! when the thought of our love and of our youthful years comes over my present soul—when, in my solitude here, I hear the well-known singing of my nightingale—what sweet anguish and what dismal joy flit across the twilight of my existence. Oh, help to rescue me from such a life as this!"
"What can I do for thee?" asked Antonio.
The powers of the apparition were by this time exhausted. She reposed for a while with closed eyes, and then answered in a faint voice, "Ah! if I could but enter a church, and be pre-
