An innocent boy was procured, as usual, who, when the charm began to work, said he saw a woman in a blue jacket that had a great deal of gold lace upon it, in a bright yellow robe of very ample dimensions, with a necklace of coral round her neck, immense earrings to her ears, and a long silver thing, shaped like an arrow, thrust through her hair which was much bundled on the top of her head.  In short he described most accurately the gala dress of the Neapolitan’s cara sposa, and afterwards her features to the very turn of her nose.  She was then kneeling by the side of a box, in which was seated a man in black, fast asleep.  The Neapolitan knew this must be the confessional.

When told to look again, the scene was changed to a very large and curious house, such as the seer had never seen, all crowded with people, and dazzling to the eye from an immensity of gilding and wax-lights.  This the Neapolitan knew must mean the theatre of San Carlo, the paradise of his countrymen, but he never could fancy his wife should be there in his absence.  She was though, for presently the boy said, “And there I see the woman in the blue jacket, with a man in a red coat whispering into her ear.”  “The devil!” muttered the Neapolitan to himself.

“Look again! and tell me what you see now,” said the magician.

“I can hardly see at all,” replied the boy, looking into the palm of his hand very closely, “it is so dark; but now I see a long street, and a large building with iron gratings, and more than a dozen skulls stuck at one corner of it, and a little farther on I see a large wide gate, and beyond it a long road; and now I see the woman in the blue, and the man in the red jacket, turning down the second street to the left of the road, and now there is an old woman opening * * ”

“I will hear no more!” bawled the Neapolitan, who had heard but too correctly described the approach to the “stews” of Naples:  and he struck the boy’s hand with such violence against his face that it flattened his nose.

The charm was thus dissolved; but the correctness of the magician’s revelation was tolerably well corroborated, when some time after the Neapolitan suddenly appeared at his home at the Torre del Greco, and learned that his wife had disappeared with a corporal of the guards.

(To be concluded in our next.)

* * * * *

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