e evidences of poverty, the
scholar regarded the structure with a reverential aspect, with such an
aspect as he might have presented had he contemplated the hut of Baucis
and Philemon.

The threshold of this obscure edifice formed of itself a bower of
greenery, thickly covered with the blooms of the honey-suckle. Under the
porch was seated a man of a most venerable countenance. He was muffled
in a gray coat of the coarsest texture, and his legs being crossed, a
worsted stocking and a slipper of untanned leather betrayed the meanness
of his under garments. His hair, brilliant with a whiteness like that of
milk, was parted in the centre of the forehead, and fell over his
shoulders in those negligent curls called _oreilles de chien_, which
became fashionable long afterwards, during the days of the French
Directory. Had the Alchemist remained profoundly ignorant as to the
identity of the old man, he must still have observed with interest,
features which were equally characterised by the pensiveness of the
student and the paleness of the valetudinarian. He knew, however,
instinctively, as he had done upon the two preceding occasions, that he
beheld a personage of illustrious memory. And he knew rightly, for it
was Milton. While the great plague was desolating the metropolis, he had
escaped from his residence in the Artillery Walk, and sought security
from the contagion by a temporary sojourn in Buckinghamshire.

Opposite the immortal sage stood a person of about the same years, but
of a very different deportment--it was the dearest of his few friends,
and the most ardent of his many worshippers, Richardson. The latter was
leaning against the trunk of a great maple-tree that grew close to the
parlour-lattice, stretching forth its enormous branches in all
directions, and mingling its foliage with the smoke that issued from the
chimney. Richardson had been reading aloud but a moment before, from a
volume of Boccaccio; he had placed the book, however, upon the
window-sill, in obedience to a movement from his companion, and
continued, with his arms folded and his eyelids closed, a silent and
almost inanimate portion of the domestic group. The quietude which
ensued was so contagious that Cagliostro remarked with a feeling of
listlessness, the details and accessories of the spectacle--the silk
curtains of rusty green festooned before the open window, the
tobacco-pipe lying among the manuscripts upon the table, even the
slouched-h