s to my hopes!"

With these words he retired, and in a few moments Isabel was surrounded
by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty,
dismissed; and refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night in
examining the chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts of
Zicci, in whose power she felt an almost preternatural confidence.

Meanwhile the Prince descended the stairs, and sought the room into
which the stranger had been shown.

He found him wrapped from head to foot in a long robe,--half gown, half
mantle,--such as was sometimes worn by ecclesiastics. The face of this
stranger was remarkable; so sunburnt and swarthy were his hues that
he must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst the races of the
farthest East. His--forehead was lofty, and his eyes so penetrating,
yet so calm, in their gaze that the Prince shrank from them as we shrink
from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secrets of our
hearts.

"What would you with me?" asked the Prince, motioning his visitor to a
seat.

"Prince di--," said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but foreign
in its accent, "son of the most energetic and masculine race that
ever applied godlike genius to the service of the Human Will, with its
winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the great
Visconti, in whose chronicles lies the History of Italy in her palmy
day, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect
ripened by the most relentless ambition,--I come to gaze upon the last
star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know
it not. Man, thy days are cumbered!"

"What means this jargon?" said the Prince, in visible astonishment and
secret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldest
thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
unguessed of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens me?"

"Zicci!" replied the stranger.

"Ha! ha!" said the Prince, laughing scornfully; "I half suspected thee
from the first. Thou art, then, the accomplice or the tool of that most
dexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan. And I suppose thou wilt
tell me that if I were to release a certain captive I have made, the
danger would vanish and the hand of the dial would be put back?"

"Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di--. I confess my knowledge of
Zicci,--a knowledge shared but by a few, who--But this touches thee not.
I would