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10 interest, the gloomy dungeons of Venice, where perished the brave and youthful chieftains of Padua. From this parchment, the history of the house of Carrara, he delighted to hear his young descendants read. Thus from childhood was their imagination filled with the honours of the past and the hopes of the future—hopes the more magnificent, from the vague hints which at times escaped from their usually taciturn parent.

The side of the Tiber on which they lived was thinly inhabited; a family of decayed nobility, named Mancini, and a convent of poor nuns, where the little Francesca acquired some knowledge of embroidery and of music, were their only neighbours. Guido had been entirely educated by his grandfather, who applied to the task by fits and starts; and in like manner the boy had taken frequent fancies of instructing his cousin, or, as she was always called, his sister. Guido was twenty, and Francesca seventeen. The three were now assembled in the old banqueting-hall, which, from its state of better preservation, had become their ordinary chamber.

The old man was seated in a large low armchair, whose rich carvings of black oak were almost architectural in their dimensions; it was drawn close to the huge and gloomy chimney,