o fix a day to sup with me, and I will then
introduce him to you, and to the best society of Naples! Diavolo! but he
is a most agreeable and witty gentleman!"

"Pray tell us how you came so suddenly to be his friend."

"My dear Belgioso, nothing more natural. He desired a box at San Carlo;
but I need not tell you that the expectation of a new opera (ah, how
superb it is,--that poor devil, Pisani; who would have thought it?) and
a new singer (what a face,--what a voice!--ah!) had engaged every corner
of the house. I heard of Zanoni's desire to honour the talent of Naples,
and, with my usual courtesy to distinguished strangers, I sent to place
my box at his disposal. He accepts it,--I wait on him between the acts;
he is most charming; he invites me to supper. Cospetto, what a retinue!
We sit late,--I tell him all the news of Naples; we grow bosom friends;
he presses on me this diamond before we part,--is a trifle, he tells me:
the jewellers value it at 5000 pistoles!--the merriest evening I have
passed these ten years."

The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.

"Signor Count Cetoxa," said one grave-looking sombre man, who had
crossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan's narrative,
"are you not aware of the strange reports about this person; and are you
not afraid to receive from him a gift which may carry with it the most
fatal consequences? Do you not know that he is said to be a sorcerer; to
possess the mal-occhio; to--"

"Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions," interrupted Cetoxa,
contemptuously. "They are out of fashion; nothing now goes down but
scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, when
sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,--a silly old man of
eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same
Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at
Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as
you or I, Belgioso."

"But that," said the grave gentleman,--"THAT is the mystery. Old Avelli
declares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when they met at
Milan. He says that even then at Milan--mark this--where, though
under another name, this Zanoni appeared in the same splendour, he was
attended also by the same mystery. And that an old man THERE remembered
to have seen him sixty years before, in Sweden."

"Tush," returned Cetoxa, "the same thing has been said of the quack
Cagl