a sudden, however, a horrific blaze, emitted from a huge focus of
intolerable light, set the whole heavens aflame. As from a fresh-created
baleful sun, blue and livid and golden-colored lightnings were shivered
from it on all sides; dull, however, in comparison to the central ball,
which, bursting instantaneously, bathed the sky, earth, and air in one
insufferable glare of phosphorescent light. The deadly blue flame lit up
everything with a livid brightness unknown to day.

Walls and faded wall-paintings, limbs of decapitated goddesses gleaming
white through the grass and rioting weeds, tottering columns, arches,
and vaults, and deserted galleries receding in endless perspective,
leaped out lifelike on a background of night and storm.

With piercing shrieks the horrified maidens scattered and fled to the
remotest corner of the ruin, where they fell prone on their faces,
quivering in a heap. In a voice strangled by fear, the kneeling mother
called for protection on the Virgin and all the saints! The violin
dropped from my nerveless grasp, and at the self-same moment the
beautiful dancer, like one struck by a bullet, tottered and dropped to
the ground, where she lay without sense or motion.

At that instant a clap of thunder so awful, so heaven-rending, rattled
overhead, so roared and banged and clattered among the clouds, that I
thought the shadowy ruin, tottering and rocking with the shock, would
come crashing about us and bury us under its remains.

But as the thunder rolled on farther and farther, seemingly rebounding
from cloud to cloud, I recovered my self-possession, and in mortal fear
rushed to the side of the prostrate girl. I was trembling all over like
a coward as I bent down to examine her. Had the lightning struck her
when she fell so abruptly to the ground? Had life forever forsaken that
magnificent form, those divinest limbs? Would those heavy eyelashes
never again be raised from those dazzling eyes? Breathlessly I moved
aside the dusky hair covering her like a pall. Breathlessly I placed my
hand on her heart; a strange shiver and spark quivered through it to my
heart. Yet she was chill as ice and motionless as a stone. "She is dead,
she is dead!" I moaned; and the pang for one I had never known exceeded
everything I had felt in my life.

"You mistake, signor," some one said close beside me; and on looking up
I saw the mother intently gazing down on her senseless child. "My Tolla
is not hurt," she crie