ins of
dirge and mass filling the air, out from the great hall of the Palazzo
Cornaro, on, across the heavily draped bridge that spanned the Grand
Canal from the water-gate of the palace, along the broad piazza crowded
with a silent throng, and into the Church of the Holy Apostles, the
funeral procession slowly passed. The service closed, and in the great
Cornaro tomb in the family chapel, at last was laid to rest the body
of one who had enjoyed much but suffered more--the sorrowful Queen of
Cyprus, the once bright and beautiful Daughter of the Republic.

Venice to-day is mouldy and wasting. The palace in which Catarina
Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop. The last living
representative of the haughty house of Lusignan--Kings, in their day, of
Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia--is said to be a waiter in a French
cafe. So royalty withers and power fades. There is no title to nobility
save character, and no family pride so unfading as a spotless name. But,
though palace and family have both decayed, the beautiful girl who was
once the glory of Venice and whom great artists loved to paint, sends us
across the ages, in a flash of regal splendor, a lesson of loyalty and
helpfulness. This, indeed, will outlive all their queenly titles, and
shows her to us as the bright-hearted girl who, in spite of sorrow, of
trouble, and of loss, developed into the strong and self-reliant woman.

THERESA OF AVILA: THE GIRL OF THE SPANISH SIERRAS.

(Afterward known as St. Theresa of Avila.) A.D. 1525.

It is a stern and gray old city that the sun looks down upon, when
once he does show his jolly face above the saw-like ridges of the grim
Guadarrama Mountains in Central Spain; a stern and gray old city as well
it may be, for it is one of the very old towns of Western Europe--Avila,
said by some to have been built by Albula, the mother of Hercules nearly
four thousand years ago.

Whether or not it was the place in which that baby gymnast strangled
the serpents who sought to kill him in his cradle, it is indeed ancient
enough to suit any boy or girl who likes to dig among the relics of
the past. For more than eight centuries the same granite walls that
now surround it have lifted their gray ramparts out of the vast and
granite-covered plains that make the country so wild and lonesome, while
its eighty-six towers and gateways, still unbroken and complete, tell
of its strength and importance in those far-off days, wh