ly connected with your felicity in this world.

"Your sincerely devoted friend,
"JERONYMO DURAS."

While Nisida was occupied in the perusal of the first paragraph of this
letter, dark clouds lowered upon her brow; but as she read the second
paragraph, wherein the salutary advice of the lawyers was conveyed to
her, those clouds rapidly dispersed, and her splendid countenance became
lighted up with joyous, burning, intoxicating hope!

It was evident that she had already made up her mind to adopt the
counsel proffered her by the eminent advocates whom the friendly
physician had consulted on her behalf.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SUBURB OF ALLA CROCE--THE JEW--THE ROBBER CHIEF'S LOVE.

It was past the hour of ten on Saturday night, when a tall, powerfully
built man emerged from what might be termed the fashionable portion of
the city of Florence, and struck into the straggling suburb of Alla
Croce.

This quarter of the town was of marvelously bad reputation, being
infested by persons of the worst description, who, by herding, as it
were, together in one particular district, had converted the entire
suburb into a sort of sanctuary where crime might take refuge, and into
which the sbirri, or police-officers, scarcely dared to penetrate.

The population of Alla Croce was not, however, entirely composed of
individuals who were at variance with the law, for poverty as well as
crime sought an asylum in that assemblage of forbidding-looking
dwellings, which formed so remarkable a contrast with the marble
palaces, noble public buildings, and handsome streets of the city of
Florence itself.

And not only did the denizens of penury and crushing toil, the artisans,
the vine-dressers, the gardeners, the water-carriers, and the porters of
Florence occupy lodgings in the suburb of Alla Croce, but even wealthy
persons--yes, men whose treasures were vast enough to pay the ransom of
princes--buried themselves and their hoards in this horrible
neighborhood.

We allude to that most undeservedly-persecuted race, the Jews--a race
endowed with many virtues and generous qualities, but whose characters
have been blackened by a host of writers whose narrow minds and
illiberal prejudices have induced them to preserve all the exaggerations
and misrepresentations which tradition hands down in the Christian world
relative to the cruelly-treated Israelite.

The enlightened