painters.

In this young girl three things were united, a single one of which would
have sufficed for the glory of a woman: the purity of the pearl in the
depths of ocean; the sublime exaltation of the Spanish Saint Teresa; and
a passion of love which was ignorant of itself. The presence of such a
woman has the virtue of a talisman. Montefiore no longer felt worn and
jaded. That young girl brought back his youthful freshness.

But, though the apparition was delightful, it did not last. The girl was
taken back to the secret chamber, where the servant-woman carried to her
openly both light and food.

"You do right to hide her," said Montefiore in Italian. "I will keep
your secret. The devil! we have generals in our army who are capable of
abducting her."

Montefiore's infatuation went so far as to suggest to him the idea of
marrying her. He accordingly asked her history, and Perez very willingly
told him the circumstances under which she had become his ward. The
prudent Spaniard was led to make this confidence because he had heard of
Montefiore in Italy, and knowing his reputation was desirous to let him
see how strong were the barriers which protected the young girl from the
possibility of seduction. Though the good-man was gifted with a certain
patriarchal eloquence, in keeping with his simple life and customs, his
tale will be improved by abridgment.

At the period when the French Revolution changed the manners and
morals of every country which served as the scene of its wars, a street
prostitute came to Tarragona, driven from Venice at the time of its
fall. The life of this woman had been a tissue of romantic adventures
and strange vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other woman of her
class, it had happened, thanks to the caprice of great lords struck with
her extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged with gold and jewels
and all the delights of excessive wealth,--flowers, carriages, pages,
maids, palaces, pictures, journeys (like those of Catherine II.); in
short, the life of a queen, despotic in her caprices and obeyed, often
beyond her own imaginings. Then, without herself, or any one, chemist,
physician, or man of science, being able to discover how her gold
evaporated, she would find herself back in the streets, poor, denuded of
everything, preserving nothing but her all-powerful beauty, yet living
on without thought or care of the past, the present, or the future.
Cast, in her poverty, into the ha