There was a carriage at the door, though the young man in his excitement had not observed it, and half-way up the first flight of steps, Francisco, hitherto engrossed and unobservant, came suddenly upon Teta's distinguished lodgers, the English Milord and his little granddaughter. Francisco, much abashed and embarrassed by the sudden encounter, took off his hat and stood aside in the corner of the wall, while that radiant little apparition swept past him. A lovely little fairy, with sweet English complexion, light hair, too pale to be called golden, but still with an occasional gleam among the curls-for curls were positively worn in those days--and a tiny light figure singularly unlike the substantial Roman order of beauty. The young painter stood entranced when she made him a slight curtsey of recognition, as she floated past in all that cloud of white, delicately tinted with ribbons and flowers and ornaments. He had never seen her before in anything but her simple morning-dress, and he thought her a beautiful fairy gliding with her noiseless step down these dingy stairs.

By the little lady's side was the Milord, a tall old Englishman, reserved and suspicious. Though the encounter was momentary and entirely accidental, Francisco felt his harsh, cold, suspicious glance, full of disdainful inquiry. "Who are you, you foreign fellow?" asked as plainly as words that haughty look; and the flush grew higher on the young man's cheek. They had scarcely passed before the old gentleman began to question his grandchild. Of course he spoke in that arrogant mincing English, with all the cold freedom which these English use, in full security that nobody understands them. Certainly Francisco did not understand him-but he went up the remaining three flights of stairs, two steps at a time, in fiery indignation and eagerness. The opinion of the Forestieri in respect to any friendship between young English ladies and young Roman painters is not at all equivocal, but at all times clearly to be understood.

Francisco accordingly sprang up the stair with a certain vengeful im

pulse in his mind. Oh how differently that old Milord would look upon Duke Agostini! And Francisco, with the quick vehemence of his race and age, indulged himself in a momentary anticipation of the pleasure of revenge-how Duke Agostini might retaliate even at his own expense, and though it involved the loss of the Signorina ! But after all, that would be poor satisfaction-so he rushed up the last dark steps to Teta's door, and plucked at the bell with a vehemence which brought the hapless Maria, Teta's woman-of-all-work, in a fright to the door. Thus the young man came in, a young whirlwind among the three women, who, with many a gesture and exclamation, were consulting over his fortunes. The table was spread, and everything ready for supper. In the centre, a tall brass lamp with four lights shone down upon the crisp endive leaves, which appeared like winter blossoms of pale yellow among the green herbage of the salad, and on the vast flask of wine, and endless quantity of browncomplexioned panetti, which Teta had provided for her guests. The three women were seated round the table, Mariuccia rather silent and extinguished, while Madame Margherita kept up the conversation with the mistress of the house. The poor peasant-woman had nothing to talk about but her baby, whom she had carried off from Genzaro under her shawl, and with a certain respectful awe listened to her two companions, who had interests in common, and were discussing the letting of their

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apartments;" how many each had, and what were the prospects of the season, and whether the Forestieri were arriving in sufficient number. There is nothing in the world which can make up for the want of these Forestieri, these barbarous people, to the thinking of modern Rome.

They tell me that the Pope means to proclaim a holy year," said Madame Margherita, shrugging her vast shoulders as Francisco came in. "Good news for us, Sora Teta, among all our other troubles. I was speaking of it the other day to one of the Frati, a monk of the Santi Apostoli. I am a British subject, you understand; I

always speak my mind. I said, The Pope, bless him! will ruin us, father-what with the failure of the wine and the dearness of the oil, and nothing to be had as it used to be, but we must needs have our pictures covered up, and our music stopped, and our theatres shut, and the Forestieri driven away! Ah, Madama,' said the priest, but the spiritual good! You will come out of it in the same blessed condition that Adam was in before he fell.' 'Ah, capito!' I cried out; senza camicia-I understand you, father --without a shirt!""

At this joke, with the truest sympathetic feeling, Teta laughed long and loud, while Mariuccia, with a little forced giggle of complaisance, crossed herself secretly in pious horror. Then Madame Margherita, whose back, like the disc of a great ball, had been hitherto obscuring the group for Francisco, turned round on an exclamation from Teta of the young man's name. She could scarcely have been any rounder-she did not look much older than she had done twenty years ago. Unlike her Italian contemporaries, both lady and peasant, the little Irishwoman's brown hair, and white teeth, and lively eyes, had survived that dangerous interval. She had taken another husband the other day, a strapping Swiss of the Pope's guard, who was a highly economical lackey and most faithful attendant to Madame Margherita. She had let her principal apartment triumphantly before anybody else had more than a nibble, and altogether was in flourishing circumstances, and on good terms with all the world.

"It is the young Don," said Teta, exaggerating all the more her reverential tone because she could scarcely manage to be respectful enough in her own person to the youth whom she had known so familiarly-" and this is the English Madame Margherita, Eccellenza. She will tell you of the things we talked of this morning whilst I go to see after the maccaroni. Accommodate yourself, Signore mio, in the great chair."

Francisco seated himself once more carelessly in Teta's big rococo chair, which was a kind of throne in the dim little room. Sitting there, he

VOL. LXXXVIII.-NO. DXL

could see, just over Madame Margherita's head, the sky and the stars gleaming in through the uncovered window, which was a door as well, and opened, with Italian Spartan indifference to fitting, directly upon the loggia, where the air was rather chill this November night. Finding himself the object of Madame Margherita's gaze, the youth kept his embarrassed eyes upon this clear spot in his dim surroundings. Madame Margherita made her examination very quietly, and when she had quite concluded, said, with as calm a tone, "Signor Don Francisco, you are like your mother."

Francisco started, taken by surprise, and reddened once more to his hair. "Then you too confirm the story, and she is my mother?" he exclaimed, almost losing his breath.

"If you are the baby whom Mariuccia there took away from the Duchessa's room-if you are the little boy whom she had brought up at San Michele, then it is I who brought you into the world," said Madame Margherita ; " and I am ready to swear a hundred times, if that would do any good, that the Duchessa Agostini, and nobody else, is your mother. Per Bacco who do you suppose but a great lady, and a great beauty, would go for to desert her child? It is wonderful to me why she did not bundle you into the basket at San Spirito, like the other unfortunate babes, and have done with you. I will swear she would have done it had she not been at Genzaro instead of Rome."

Here the English nurse, whose professional horror of the Duchessa's unmotherliness, which she had never ventured to unburden herself of before, returned to her mind in full force, now that her mouth was opened, made a pause for a reply; but receiving none, Francisco being fully occupied in the exercise of self-restraint, went on again with her personal sentiments.

"It was I who brought you into the world," said Madame Margherita; " and a great passion I was in when I knew why I had been called, and that it was a secret case, and the baby, after all my trouble, done up in swaddling-clothes, poor little

2 H

unfortunate soul! The Duchessa never took the least notice of you, Signore, no more than if you had been a little puppy dog; nor half as much, davvero! for I remember a filthy little spaniel that used to lie on her bed. Pah! do not speak to me of your great Italian ladies! who shut themselves up within doors and curtains, and have their babies in secret, and turn them off with scarce a look; not to say give the poor innocents over to be bound up in swaddlingclothes!"

"Madama! madama!" cried Mariuccia, who had been studying with dismay the changes of Francisco's countenance, and perceiving he was on the eve of an explosion, suffered her own natural indignation at this national censure to have its course. "You are mad, you Forestieri! you will hold with nothing but your own way. Do you suppose a woman of Rocca would dress a poor little child in your modo Inglese, which was never meant for our country? and where were there ever straighter limbs or an air noble like our young Don!"

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Mariuccia, my good woman, you know nothing about it," said Madame Margherita, "to think I should be called to such a case! I who have nothing to do, only with English ladies, as all Rome knows; and old Teta, Cenci's aunt, coming to seek me, the old hypocrite, with her Jesu Nazzarino! and not a word of what it was, till I was safe in Genzaro, and could not help myself; and then the Duchessa

"Do me the pleasure," said Francisco, interposing hastily with a shrill tone in his voice, to say nothing more of the Duchessa."

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Madame Margherita, suddenly interrupted in her rapid flow of talk, and brought to a stand-still in the fulness of her eloquence by so unexpected an interference, stopped short with sheer amazement, and

gazed at the young speaker as if she could hardly believe in his presumption; but catching, as Teta had done before her, that look on the young man's passionate face, so entirely new to the handsome young features

that sudden subtle unexpected_resemblance, which recalled the Duchessa in her best and haughtiest days, the quickwitted little Irishwoman came to herself. She changed colour with a momentary flush of resentment, then acknowledged to herself that he was right, and then solaced her dignity by getting up from her chair and making him a solemn and sarcastic courtesy. "Signor Don Francisco," said Madame Margherita, with cutting irony, “I have the honour to assure you again that you are very like your mother!"

At this moment, fortunately, Teta entered, with her handmaiden behind her bearing the macaroni. The sugo had been elaborated under Mariuccia's anxious superintendence;

-never before had she done such a feat of cookery;-and the rich brown gravy with its delicate flavour of tomatoes-or, more pleasant title, pomidori, apples of gold-lay tempting and savoury over the fantastic crimped ribbons of the macaroni in its lordly round dish. With the proud conviction that it was a dish for a prince, Teta stood imperatively by to see it placed upon the board; and as the whole party had dined about mid-day, and did not know what it was to indulge in intermediary libations of tea, the savour of the sugo penetrated, despite of excitement and passion, into their primitive sensations. Mariuccia, good woman, crossed herself with a murmured grace; even Francisco, with no ill-will, drew towards the table his rococo chairother things could wait without harm, but delay would certainly spoil the macaroni: there was the truest philosophy in the thought.

It was still early when the young painter left the house of Teta; but he neither went to the theatre nor to his favourite café. His mind was

rapt into another sphere, above dominoes, above gossip, even above the melodies of the opera. He strayed along through the Corso, where few

people now walked, but where all the cafés were thronged, and the rough pavement echoed to the stream of carriages, conveying beatific glimpses of buxom angels in full evening dress, across the vision of the passers-by. Then into the life, different, yet similar, which went on behind in the crooked Roman streets, in the genuine Roman quarters where there were no Forestieri. There, outside lights glared and flickered, and green boughs waved out from among the hams and cheeses of the Pizzicheria, and flat brown loaves ranged themselves by the baker's door; and dim lamps burned before undecipherable shrines, to which nobody vouchsafed a glance; and a loud and lively population, buying, joking, talking, smoking endless cigars, fluctuated among the narrow black windings of the streets between the two lines of high houses. The cafés in these erratic vicoli or lanes, as well as in the Corso, were all crowded to the door, and clouds of bearded Roman faces appeared over the narrow tables in a world of stormy talk, at strange contrast with the mild tipple in which they indulged themselves-stormy to the unaccustomed sight, but quite undangerous-the manner of the inen. Francisco wandered through among them, scarcely seeing the passengers, on his way up to his little room, four stories high, in the Piazza of Trajan. When he had reached his lofty lodging he went out upon the little loggia, to which his room opened, and stood there leaning on the rails, let ting his very cigar go out in the fullness of his thoughts. The moon was up and bright, whitely blazing upon the cold blue crowd of broken pillars far down in that historic area, and vainly attempting to silver over the dark shaft of that column where Trajan himself stood high into the night. This same morning, twelve hours ago, Francisco had smoked his cigar very cheerfully over these railings, looking down with amused and ready interest to see the countrypeople's carts, and the honest louts of contadini gazing in at the wonders of the iron-shops. In the dewy freshness and sweet sunshine of the morning, he had perhaps indulged in a momentary sentimental speculation

and sigh over the hard fortune which had made the Signorina Inglese a great man's daughter, and put such a gulf between them; but, on the whole, had been very well pleased with his lodging and himself and things in general, philosophically leaving the morrow to provide for its own affairs. Now, what a change! Not more unlike was that white light, unreal and ghostly, which, catching a passing figure on the street, made it look so preternaturally distant and minute-that light which threw such portentous shadow on the other side of the way, and picked out every line of the two churches at the end of the square with a dead immovable illumination-not more unlike was that moonlight to the sunshine than the one Francisco was to the other. There he stood, with his cigar out, seeing nothing save a faint panorama of light and shade; seeing rathernow the gleaming front of the Genzaro palace, now Mariuccia's little house at Rocca, now the consultation in Teta's room; while through all his thoughts went gleaming, floating, that white fairy down the dark staircase, with the tender tints of halfvisible colour about her, and the flowers in her pretty hair. If he had been slightly out of his wits that night it would not have been wonderful; and he inclined much more to muse outside there on the loggia, with no companions but the light and darkness, than to return to the little room where everything reminded him that his apartment was on the fourth piano in the Piazza of Trajan, and be himself only Francisco Spoleto the painter, on whom Milord frowned ominously, sternly disapproving of the Signorina's curtsy, and that momentary blush which reflected itself upon Francisco's face. Ah, you haughty Milord, if you but knew! if one could only some time hope to let you know that the Agostini Duke would disdain your alliance, if he did not love your daughter! But, alas! here we are, all untitled and unendowed, with that half-finished portrait on the easel, and some copies unframed and disposable upon the wall, and unhappily nothing else to depend upon for daily bread, wine, minestra, and cigars! Not the Duke Agos

tini at all, only that unhappy Francisco, who never more, if he lived a hundred years, could be again the contented Francisco the painter who slept last night under that quiet roof. Francisco tossed the cigar, which had been out for an hour, impatiently from his hand, and watched it descending those luminous depths of air, with a hasty exclamation. It was drawing towards midnight, and echoes of song were rising out of the streets, fumes of the opera, evaporating from the young Roman brains as they came out of the theatres. With another impatient exclamation Francisco, who did the same thing himself last night, plunged in through his window, and closed it before the singers came near. He had no toleration for the fools and their music-he who had to think! Ah, hard, unusual exercise! He knew no more how to set about it, than he would have known how to build another St Peter's. He lighted two lights of his Roman lamp, turned the portrait with its face to the easel, and threw himself into the handiest chair. You suppose his mind busied itself about the ways and means of establishing his rights-how he should hire advocates and bring his cause before the legal courts, and first of all and most important, how he should get the money for these momentous uses? But, alas! Francisco understood nothing of

the art of thinking! His fancy went wandering about that summer-front of the Genzaro palace, about the English Signorina; about the Duchessa and Donna Anna with a darker fascination; and he pictured to himself Mariuccia's ride home through the olive woods, with himself a helpless unconscious bundle in her arms; and leaped forward from that scene in the past to the scene in the future, when all Rome, with acclamations, should hail the injured youth's restitution to his rights, and the English Milord should throw up his hands to heaven, in operatic delight, and place his pretty daughter in Francisco's arms. Under the influence of this last scene, the young man fell asleep, which was exactly the best thing he could have done under the circumstances. Thinking, had it lain in his way, would not have served him much in that emergency. He was only a gay young Roman, trained to no particular exercise of will or selfdenial. His wild plan in the morning, of standing perpetually at his easel, painting impossible pictures, till he had earned enough for his suit, was as mad a notion as could have possessed any man, had it not been transitory as any other sudden flame. He was not of the race nor of the mettle to scorn delights and live laborious days.

It was with a beating heart that Francisco directed his steps next day towards Teta's house-not to see Teta this time, but to have his last sitting from the Signorina Inglese, who had so much complicated and bewildered the young man's thoughts. When he entered the little sitting-room where he had hitherto been received, Francisco found his fears fully confirmed. It was not the large form of Teta, nor the prim one of the English waiting-woman-safest of third parties, who knew no Italian-which presided over this sitting, but my ford himself, grand and cross, with the blackest of looks and haughtiest of salutations for the young painter. My lord was old, very attenuated,