do not talk of this terrible Zanoni. You may be sure
that his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful pistoles, is
only witchcraft. I look at the money he gave me the other night, every
quarter of an hour, to see whether it has not turned into pebbles."

"Do you then really believe," said Viola, with timid earnestness, "that
sorcery still exists?"

"Believe! Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro? How do you think he
cured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave him up? How do you
think he has managed himself to live at least these three hundred years?
How do you think he fascinates every one to his bidding with a look, as
the vampires do?"

"Ah, is this only witchcraft? It is like it,--it must be!" murmured
Viola, turning very pale. Gionetta herself was scarcely more
superstitious than the daughter of the musician. And her very innocence,
chilled at the strangeness of virgin passion, might well ascribe to
magic what hearts more experienced would have resolved to love.

"And then, why has this great Prince di -- been so terrified by him? Why
has he ceased to persecute us? Why has he been so quiet and still? Is
there no sorcery in all that?"

"Think you, then," said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, "that I owe
that happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Be
silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult?
O beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild
energy; "thou lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta! leave me
alone,--leave me!"

"And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will be
spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don't eat you will
lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody
cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like
old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil. I'll go and see to
the polenta."

"Since I have known this man," said the girl, half aloud,--"since his
dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape
from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
something that is not of earth. Phantoms float before me at night; and
a fluttering, like the wing of a bird, within my heart, seems as if the
spirit were terrified, and would break its cage."

While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.

"Viola!--bel