y able to administer consolation. Andrea Barrofaldi,
understanding the state of the case, now interposed with his courtesies,
and the two officers were invited to share his bachelor's breakfast.
What followed, in consequence of this visit, and the communications to
which it gave rise, will appear in the course of the narrative.

CHAPTER XIII.

"If ever you have looked on better days,
If ever been where bells have knolled to church;
If ever sat at any good man's feast!
If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear,
And know what 'tis to pity, and be pitied,
Let gentleness my strong enforcement be."

SHAKESPEARE.

It is now necessary to advance the time, and to transfer the scene of
our tale to another, but not a distant, part of the same sea. Let the
reader fancy himself standing at the mouth of a large bay of some
sixteen or eighteen miles in diameter, in nearly every direction; though
the shores must be indented with advancing promontories and receding
curvatures, while the depth of the whole might possibly a little exceed
the greatest width. He will then occupy the spot of which we wish to
present to him one of the fairest panoramas of earth. On his right
stands a high, rocky island of dark tufa, rendered gay, amid all its
magnificent formations, by smiling vineyards and teeming villages, and
interesting by ruins that commemorate events as remote as the Caesars. A
narrow passage of the blue Mediterranean separates this island from a
bold cape on the main, whence follows a succession of picturesque,
village-clad heights and valleys, relieved by scenery equally bold and
soft, and adorned by the monkish habitations called in the language of
the country Camaldolis, until we reach a small city which stands on a
plain that rises above the water between one and two hundred feet, on a
base of tufa, and the houses of which extend to the very verge of the
dizzy cliffs that limit its extent on the north. The plain itself is
like a hive, with its dwellings and scenes of life, while the heights
behind it teem with cottages and the signs of human labor. Quitting this
smiling part of the coast, we reach a point, always following the
circuit of the bay, where the hills or heights tower into ragged
mountains, which stretch their pointed peaks upward to some six or seven
thousand feet toward the clouds, having sides now wild with precipices
and ravines, now picturesque with shooting-towers, hamlet