their houses.
Nobody knew any thing more of him than what he himself chose to say,
which was very little. It was rumoured, however, that he belonged to a
religious fraternity--but whether of the Jesuits, or some other order,
no one knew, nor was it possible to trace the origin of the report.
Manucci himself, the object of all these conjectures, seemed perfectly
unconscious of, or indifferent to them. He took a house at a short
distance from the town, close to a small country residence to which my
mother had retired; and in conformity with my father's last and mutely
expressed wish, showed a most friendly disposition towards me,
interesting himself in my studies, and to a certain extent
superintending my education. He visited us very frequently, and
gradually I became accustomed to his presence, and my aversion to him
diminished. The remembrance of my dream grew fainter and fainter, and
the guilty agitation and strange appearance of Manucci on the night of
his arrival at Hamburg, lost the sharp distinctness of outline with
which they had at first been engraved upon my memory. I regarded all
that I had seen that night as a dream, and nothing more.

The house inhabited by Manucci was of handsome exterior, and situated
in the middle of a large garden. The door was rarely opened to
visitors, and, besides the Italian, an old servant-maid was its only
inmate. I myself was never admitted within its walls till I had
attained my seventeenth year; but when I was, the curious arrangements
of the dwelling made a strong impression upon my fancy. The whole of
the ground floor was one large hall, of which the ceiling was
supported by pillars, and whence a staircase led to three apartments,
one used as a sitting-room, another as bed-chamber, and the third,
which was kept constantly shut, as a study. The sitting-room, instead
of doors, had green silk curtains in the doorways. Eight chandeliers
were fixed in pairs upon the wall, and between them were four black
marble tablets, on which were engraved in golden letters, the
words:--Watch! Pray! Labour! Love! In a recess was a sort of altar,
above which was suspended a valuable painting from the hand of one of
the old masters. Behind a folding screen in the sleeping-room, stood
the bed, which was surrounded by sabres, daggers, stilettoes, and
pistols of various calibre; and from this room a strong door, clenched
and bound with iron, led into the study, the interior of which I never
saw. Alt