maidens such as Lilla too often become the household drudges of common mechanics or day-laborers, living and dying in the one routine of hard work, and often knowing and caring for nothing better than the mountain-hut, the farm-kitchen, or the covered stall in the market-place.  Surely it is an ill-balanced world—­so many mistakes are made; Fate plays us so many apparently unnecessary tricks, and we are all of us such blind madmen, knowing not whither we are going from one day to another!  I am told that it is no longer fashionable to believe in a devil—­but I care nothing for fashion!  A devil there is I am sure, who for some inscrutable reason has a share in the ruling of this planet—­a devil who delights in mocking us from the cradle to the grave.  And perhaps we are never so hopelessly, utterly fooled as in our marriages!

Occupied in various thoughts, I scarcely saw where I wandered, till a flashing glimmer of blue blossoms recalled me to the object of my walk.  I had reached the Punto d’Angelo.  It was, as Lilla had said, a flat rock bare in every place save at the summit, where it was thickly covered with the lovely gentians, flowers that are rare in this part of Italy.  Here then the fabled angel paused in his flight to bless the venerable sanctuary of Monte Vergine.  I stopped and looked around me.  The view was indeed superb—­from the leafy bosom of the valley, the green hills like smooth, undulating billows rolled upward, till their emerald verdure was lost in the dense purple shadows and tall peaks of the Apennines; the town of Avellino lay at my feet, small yet clearly defined as a miniature painting on porcelain; and a little further beyond and above me rose the gray tower of the Monte Vergine itself, the one sad and solitary-looking object in all the luxuriant riante landscape.

I sat down to rest, not as an intruder on the angel’s flower-embroidered throne, but on a grassy knoll close by.  And then I bethought me of a packet I had received from Naples that morning—­a packet that I desired yet hesitated to open.  It had been sent by the Marquis D’Avencourt, accompanied by a courteous letter, which informed me that Ferrari’s body had been privately buried with all the last religious rites in the cemetery, “close to the funeral vault of the Romani family,” wrote D’Avencourt, “as, from all we can hear or discover, such seems to have been his own desire.  He was, it appears, a sort of adopted brother of the lately deceased count, and on being informed of this circumstance, we buried him in accordance with the sentiments he would no doubt have expressed had he considered the possible nearness of his own end at the time of the combat.”