but those idle imaginations of yours, which, by inspiring the mother of Crescentia with hopes that are never to be realized, have deprived her for ever of repose."
May I ask you to explain yourself?" said Antonio.
Young man," said the father, "since that night on which you pretended to have met"—
"Pretended!" cried Antonio, laying his hand on his sword.
"Nay!" continued the old man, "let that pass. Far be it from me to accuse you of falsehood. I know well the truth and nobleness of your nature. But do you think I can have failed to observe that your senses have been to a certain extent disordered ever since that unhappy night on which you met the funeral of my daughter—of her who, on the following day, was to have been your bride? Then, during the night of agony you passed in the forest, is it wonderful that. in the excess of your passionate grief, you should have imagined that you again beheld the image of Crescentia—and that you should have mixed up the vision with the remembrance of your own unhappy parents? Consider, were we able to discover the smallest trace of the hut you said you had spent the night in, or of the robber you had slain? Not a vestige—and not a soul in the neighbourhood had ever heard either of the one or the other. No, my dear young friend, your meeting with my real dead daughter had turned your brain and overthrown your reason; and the same disordered fantasy will account for your vision of the hermit's cell, in which the image of the dead Pietro presented itself to your imagination. Believe me, all these phantoms were brought before your senses merely by the jugglery of pain and sorrow."
Antonio was perplexed, and knew not what to reply. Dreadfully as his faculties had been shaken by the loss of his beloved Crescentia, he yet felt convinced that the events of that awful night in the forest, were not the mere offspring of his imagination. At the same time, he became doubly desirous of restoring that second Crescentia to her disconsolate parents—if it were only for the purpose of convincing the sceptical Podesta of the truth of his story. With these feelings he bade them farewell, and went forth into the crowded streets of the city.
Chap. XI.
A New Friend.
As he was proceeding along the thronged thoroughfares, he caught an indistinct glimpse of what appeared to him to be the figure of the hideous old woman of the forest. In the utmost anxiety he pressed forward to overtake her, and had almost done so, when a long procession of pilgrims, streaming forth out of a side street, cut him off from the object of his pursuit, and, when the pageant had passed, the old woman was nowhere to be seen. In great perplexity, he ascended the steps of the Temple of St. John, in order to obtain a more extensive view, and, while standing there, he felt a friendly tap upon the shoulder, and heard his name pronounced by a well-known voice. On turning round, he recognised his Spanish friend Alphonso.
"Here you are," said the latter, in a tone of cordiality, "on the very spot where I expected to find you."
"What do you mean by that " asked Antonio.
"Let us leave these crowded streets," said Alphonso, "where we can hardly hear ourselves speaking for the worse than Babylonian confusion of tongues that prevails."
Accordingly, they walked into the country, and here Alphonso informed his friend, that since he came to Rome, he had addicted himself to the study of astrology, fortune-telling, and other similar pursuits—pursuits which he had formerly condemned, in the belief that they could be successfully practised only through the instrumentality of evil spirits. "But," continued he, "since I became acquainted with the incomparable Castalio, I have viewed these matters in a totally different light."
"Is it possible," cried Antonio, "that, after our terrible experience in Padua, you can again put your soul in peril by cultivating such studies? Are you, then, of opinion that the sciences which stand within the limits of nature and reason are not worth the pains bestowed upon them; and that all our labour ought to be de-
