blinded by his fears and policy, that he will not believe the hideous rumours afloat concerning this modern harpy, on report, and would compel me to accept her direful hand, I have sworn to learn the truth of all with mine own avouch; and then, if he persists in his resolution, I will take this holy and unwedding mantle in very earnest, and spend the remainder of my days fighting for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre."

"Your brother, Monsignor Hippolito, would be grieved to hear you talk so, sir," said the canon, smiling.

"I blame thee not for the word, brother in arms," said the English knight, in a more serious tone than his galliard mood often prompted. "For methinks (if it be no sin to say so) even the holy father's uncleship should scarcely coax me into uniting the honours of my house, though inferior to yours, (albeit we are cousins to the king's mother, the Lady Margaret,) to the bastard brood of Borgia.”

"But their actions, their actions!-I look the rather to them!" said the Knight of St. John, with increasing vehemence.

"Look then what scant wisdom may come with gray hairs!" said Messer Bembo, smiling; "since the famously wise duke, Ercole, your father, consented to this project of your reverend lordship's solely in the belief that you would come back a convert to his own."

"Yea, for our poet legend-monger, Messer Ariosto, reports us such marvellous tales of this woman's

beauty, as if it were of Helen of Troy!" returned the Knight of St. John, colouring and smiling, but with a strong curl of contempt. "You look only to the outside of things, you poets, Bembo; you suspect not the serpent among the rosemary. But were she beautiful as Venus, she hath too many of the impudent goddess's other qualities, to win aught but scorn and hatred from a soul like mine. The woman whom I love, Sir Reginald, must be pure in name as in deed, in deed as in spirit, in spirit as yonder summit of snow which mingles whiteness with the heavens !"

"Then, by the mass, you must not seek for her in Italy," replied Sir Reginald, setting his cap aside on his handsome audacious features, and smiling significantly; "at least so far as my experience

warrants."

"Ay, it is such as thou, Le Beaufort!-it is the perpetual wars of which you barbarians make Italy your battle-field, which is gradually trampling out every noble quality in this once heroic land!" said the Hospitaller, sighing deeply.

"Then where would you recommend monsignor rather to seek a wife?-taking it that he hath assumed this holy garb only for a carnival time?" said Bembo, somewhat testily.

"I have abode long with him in Italy-let him return with me to England!" said the young knight enthusiastically; "there he will find maidens infinitely more beautiful than your sun-scorched women here, and as innocent as the pearls they deck their ringlets withal!"

"Colourless ghosts are not to my taste, Messer," replied Bembo, hastily.

"Colourless!-could you see my sweet cousin Alice!" said the young knight. "I remember her with cheeks as ruddy as any rose; and I loved her so well, that meaning to wed her to my brother Henry, I believe 'twas one of the reasons they sent me to these Italian wars. But since he fell by a Scottish lance they must have me home again, as if I were the sight of their eyes. Our Lady keep his soul!--but he hath left me a greater heir than ever I thought to be."

“Amen!" said the ecclesiastic tranquilly, crossing himself. "But you must abate something of the sharpness of your tongue against the brown Italian ladies, if you hope to obtain the dispensation to wed your cousin that was betrothed to your brother, for ladies have some influence at Rome, or they tell great lies that come from it."

""Tis a traveller's trick, they say," observed the Knight of the Sun, slightly pricking his steed ; "but I am not so unhandsomely put together as to be sorry for that. But, assuredly, Messer Bembo, your castle is one in the air, in many respects."

"Yet Lucrezia Borgia is fair, not brown," said the Hospitaller musingly, without noticing this latter ob

servation.

"The duke your father was ever held to be a wise man," said Messer Bembo slily. "I have often heard it said that the golden-haired goddess herself was not fairer that day she sprang from ocean,

while the waters blushed rosy red with delight and shame to see her unveiled charms."

"You are in Messer Ariosto's vein this sunset, Pietro," said the Hospitaller, somewhat sadly; " but it needs a very inventive genius to speak well of this lady."

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By the bonny broom-flower! to be so very married a damsel, I did never hear of one who bore so very evil a report," said Sir Reginald, laughing; and striking his long lance against the trunk of a beech-tree which shadowed the path, he struck off a huge piece of bark, much apparently to his con

tent.

"Married! truly, I am to be the fourth husband this lady hath honoured with her rapid affections!" said the Hospitaller, with a tart smile; " or perchance it were speaking it more to the matter to say— person."

"Nay, monsignor, for a knight and eremite of holy Austin you speak it harshly," said Messer Bembo. "The first espousals were when she was a mere child, and I doubt whether she ever saw the betrothed gentleman; for she had not left the convent when her sire dissolved the contract, as a match unequal to his new dignities. The Lord of Pesaro she quarrelled with ;-let me see, no, it was not at the altar-but the divorce was pronounced by a very solemn and unprejudiced tribunal. Then for the third-Don Alfonso of Arragon-poor lord, he did not survive his marriage long!"

"Murdered-assassinated! Who knows if not by her connivance?" said the Hospitaller. "Well may

she be called in Rome the Fatal Bride!-and 'tis believed that I will consent to make the fourth! The first-mark you the gratitude of these Borgias!was son of the Castilian gentleman who saved Alexander's life, in battle against the Moors of Granada, when, forsooth, he was a soldier! And yet, not satisfied with an ignominious breaking of the contract, he even compelled the old man to put his son in a manner to death by making a friar of him."

My experience of friars, signor, leads me to think that many a ghost would be glad if you could prove the identity!" replied Bembo. "It is known how rash and headlong in all his passions the pontiff is-and was it not the very madness of gratitude to betroth a youth of twenty to a child in the cradle? And if he made a priest of him, it was probably to his good, that he might recompense his loss with the dignities and wealth at his disposal! I have heard it said, the young man was so deep a scholar, that he was fit for nothing but a Spanish bishopric or the president's chair at Bologna the learned!"

"The second!" continued the Hospitaller vehemently, as if vexed at the apology, "the second a dispossessed and shame struck exile; the third gashed all over, then strangled! You shall pardon me."

"But may not the unhappy lady herself be innocent, whoever is guilty of these atrocities?" said Bembo earnestly.

"It is burned into my soul-those direful lines of Pontano!" said the Hospitaller, vehemently. "They were put in the mouth of the death's-head which was served to me at table, in a golden ewer,