nt, who had approached the window,
from which he was looking.

Wagner sprung from his couch, and glanced forth into the garden beneath.

The sbirri were advancing along the gravel pathway, bearing amongst them
the corpse of Agnes upon whose pallid countenance the morning sunbeams
were dancing, as if in mockery even at death.

"Holy Virgin! it is indeed Agnes!" cried Wagner, in a tone of the most
profound heart-rending anguish, and he fell back senseless in the arms
of the lieutenant.

An hour afterward, Fernand Wagner was the inmate of a dungeon beneath
the palace inhabited by the Duke of Florence.

CHAPTER XVI.

NISIDA AND THE CARMELITE ABBESS.

Punctually at midday, the Lady Nisida of Riverola proceeded, alone and
unattended, to the Convent of Carmelite Nuns, where she was immediately
admitted into the presence of the abbess.

The superior of this monastic establishment, was a tall, thin,
stern-looking woman, with a sallow complexion, an imperious compression
of the lips, and small, grey eyes, that seemed to flicker with malignity
rather than to beam with the pure light of Christian love.

She was noted for the austerity of her manners, the rigid discipline
which she maintained in the convent, and the inexorable disposition
which she showed toward those who, having committed a fault, came within
her jurisdiction.

Rumor was often busy with the affairs of the Carmelite Convent; and the
grandams and gossips of Florence would huddle together around their
domestic hearths, on the cold winter's evenings, and venture mysterious
hints and whispers of strange deeds committed within the walls of that
sacred institution; how from time to time some young and beautiful nun
had suddenly disappeared, to the surprise and alarm of her companions;
how piercing shrieks had been heard to issue from the interior of the
building, by those who passed near it at night,--and how the inmates
themselves were often aroused from their slumbers by strange noises
resembling the rattling of chains, the working of ponderous machinery,
and the revolution of huge wheels.

Such food for scandal as those mysterious whispers supplied, was not
likely to pass without exaggeration; and that love of the marvelous
which inspired the aforesaid gossips, led to the embellishment of the
rumors just glanced at--so that one declared with a solemn shake of the
head, how spirits were seen to glide around the convent walls at
night--and another a