t was going on around her, and to be thinking of nothing but
the plaintive sounds she caused her instrument to utter, and the
capricious course of the clouds.

The good Panorio, disheartened by the ill success of his attempts, took
the resolution of addressing himself to me. "Come, dear Zorze," said he,
"try in thy turn the power of thy affection upon this capricious beauty.
There exists between you two a sort of magnetic sympathy stronger than
all my reasoning, and the sound of thy voice succeeds in drawing her
from her deepest distraction."

"This magnetic sympathy of which thou speakest to me," I answered,
"comes, dear abbe, from the identity of our feelings. We have suffered
in the same way and thought the same things, and we know each other well
enough, she and I, to know what sort of ideas external circumstances
recall to each. I wager that I can guess, not the subject, but at least
the nature, of her reverie." And turning toward Beppa, "_Carissima_," I
said gently, "of which of our sisters art thou thinking?"

"Of the most beautiful," she answered without turning round, "of the
proudest, the most unfortunate."

"When did she die?" I continued, already interested in her who lived in
the memory of my noble friend, and desiring to associate myself by my
regrets with a destiny which could not be strange to me.

"She died at the close of last winter, on the night of the ball at the
palace Servilio. She had resisted many sorrows, she had come forth
victorious from many dangers, had suffered, without succumbing, terrible
agonies, and died suddenly without leaving any trace, as if carried off
by a thunderbolt. Every one here knew her more or less, but no one so
well as I, because none loved her so much, and she only let herself be
known according as she was loved. Others do not believe in her death,
although she has not appeared since the night of which I tell thee: they
say it has often happened that she has disappeared thus for a long time,
and returned again afterward. But _I_ know that she will never come
back any more, and that her part upon the earth is finished. If I wished
to doubt it I could not: she took care to let me know the fatal truth
through him who was the cause of her death. And what a misfortune was
that! O God! the greatest misfortune of our unhappy age! Such a
beautiful life was hers! so beautiful and so full of contrasts! so
illustrious, so mysterious, so sad, so magnificent, so enthusiastic, so