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318 been my horror, when, just as I was about to lay my hand on the lock, the folding-doors opened of themselves without noise, my candle was extinguished, and precisely as if I had walked up to a mirror, I saw myself advancing from the closet. The figure was like a picture painted on a dark ground, visible by its own light, and giving out a kind of effulgence, by which other objects in the room were also to be distinguished. ‘Tremble not,—fear not!’ said a voice, ‘I am thine, thy , and am come to announce thy death, which is near at hand, and the fate which hangs over thy whole race!’ Thereafter, the spectre explained to me many events that are yet to come. I listened with a degree of calmness and reflection which is to myself wonderful, and, just as I had proposed a question on your account, feeling most anxious to receive an answer, the room became utterly dark, and all traces of the supernatural visitation were gone. ‘This, my dearest Florentine,’ concluded Seraphina, ‘is all that I am permitted to tell you.’

Good Heaven!’ cried I, ‘your death, then, is near at hand?’ For that thought at the moment completely overpowered every other in my