hought that the
game was lost, were beginning to hope again.

After listening to him, old Count de Lancolme, who had spent his whole
life in rummaging libraries, and who had certainly compiled more
manuscripts than any Benedectine friar, shook his bald head, and
exclaimed in his shrill, rather mocking voice:

"Will you allow me to tell you a very old story, which has just come
into my head, while you were speaking, my dear friend, which I read
formerly in an old Italian city, though I forget at this moment where it
was?

"It happened in the fifteenth century, which is far removed from our
epoch, but you shall judge for yourselves whether it might not have
happened yesterday.

"Since the day, when mad with rage and rebellion, the town had made a
bonfire of the Ducal palace, and had ignominiously expelled that
patrician who had been their _podestat_[23], as if he had been some
vicious scoundrel, had thrust his lovely daughter into a convent, and
had forced his sons, who might have claimed their parental heritage, and
have again imposed the abhorred yoke upon them, into a monastery, the
town had never known any prosperous times. One after another the shops
closed, and money became as scarce as if there had been an invasion of
barbarian hordes, who had emptied the State treasury, and stolen the
last gold coin.

[Footnote 23: Venetian and Genoese magistrate.--TRANSLATOR.]

"The poor people were in abject misery, and in vain held out their hands
to passers-by under the church porches, and in the squares, while only
the watchmen disturbed the silence of the starlit nights, by their
monotonous and melancholy call, which announced the flight of the hours
as they passed.

"There were no more serenades; no longer did viols and flutes trouble
the slumbers of the lovers' choice; no longer were amorous arms thrown
round women's supple waists, nor were bottles of red wine put to cool in
the fountains under the trees. There were no more love adventures, to
the rhythm of laughter and of kisses; nothing but heavy, monotonous
weariness, and the anxiety as to what the next day might bring forth,
and ceaseless, unbridled ambitions and lusts.

"The palaces were deserted, one by one, as if the plague were raging,
and the nobility had fled to Florence and to Rome. In the beginning, the
common people, artisans and shop-keepers had installed themselves in
power, as in a conquered city, and had seized posts of honor and
well-paid offic