"Let her go," said Berecynth, "we shall get on very well without her, so admirably do our dispositions harmonize."
"But wherefore should she have run away from me, ungrateful baggage that she is? If we were to part, why would we not part friends? Confound her, though! I might have made a good market of her, and would have done so, had she not obstinately held out in the strength of her love for that silly young gallant who came to our collage in the forest."
"Hold there!" cried Berecynth, hiccuping, and reeling, and half asleep. "If you begin to talk of love, I have done with you—ha, ha, ha! Love! —it was that stupid word that demolished my great master Pietro. He might have been a professor to this hour, and fed his young goslings with philosophy, but he tumbled over love, and broke his neck; and so, farewell to him—and farewell to you also, dear aunt. To-morrow night I shall return to you about the same hour; and then we meet never to part more."
"Farewell!" responded Pancretia. "Since you entered I have felt myself quite a different being. What a joyous time we shall have of it!"
"That we shall," stammered Berecynth, who, staggering forth into the street, went in the direction of his own dwelling.
Chap. XIII.
The End of Pietro.
Meanwhile Antonio apprised Podesta and his wife of his absolute conviction that he had seen the old woman, and should yet succeed in restoring their lost daughter to their arms. The mother placed implicit confidence in what he said, but the father still continued sceptical. Before sunset, he went, in company with his friend Alphonso, to visit the wise Castalio.
Castalio received them with much cordiality, and said to Antonio—"Here, my friend, take this paper; you will find marked upon it the particular street and house in which that wicked old woman is to be found. When you have discovered her, I think you will no longer doubt the accuracy of my science."
"I am already convinced of its certainty," replied Antonio. "You are certainly the wisest of mortals; and, through your means, I expect to be made the happiest. I shall straightway proceed to the old woman's house, and, if Crescentia be not dead or carried off, I shall at once restore her to her parents."
Full of these expectations he laid his hand on the handle of the door, and was about to leave the house, when a knocking was heard from without, accompanied by a violent coughing and a scraping of feet. "Who is there? " cried Castalio. Antonio opened the door, and in walked Berecynth.
"Your most obedient," said he, making a variety of grimaces as he paid his respects to Castalio.
"Who are you?" cried the latter, turning pale and recoiling a few paces before the presence of the dwarf.
"He is a miscreant of the worst description," answered Antonio—"a sorcerer, whom we must deliver up to the Inquisition. This is the accursed Berecynth himself, whose story you are already acquainted with."
"So you think, youngster!" said the dwarf, with an expression of the profoundest contempt. "But my business is not with you, child. Do you not know me?" roared he aloud to Castalio, "or have you no need of my services at present?"
"How should I," said Castalio, with faltering voice, "when I never saw you in my life before Begone, I must decline your services; my poor house is too small to accommodate any more than myself."
Berecynth paced up and down the floor. "You do not know me, then?" said he. "It may be so—people change, and a man is not always in his prime. Yet, I think, that any one who has once seen me, would not easily forget me. And you, my young gentlemen, (turning to the youths,) do you not know who this precious wisdom-hunter is?"
"To be sure we do," answered Antonio, " he is our friend, the excellent Castalio."
The little man shouted with laughter till walls and roof rang; "Castalio! Castalio!" cried he, like one possessed, "and why not Aganippe or Hippocrene? Where are your eyes, my
