at last drowned his eloquent voice in the cold waters of martyrdom.  Savonarola was an Italian Luther,—­differing from the great Northern Reformer as the more ethereally strung and nervous Italian differs from the bluff and burly German; and like Luther he became in his time the centre of every living thing in society about him.  He inspired the pencils of artists, guided the counsels of statesmen, and, a poet himself, was an inspiration to poets.  Everywhere in Italy the monks of his order were travelling, restoring the shrines, preaching against the voluptuous and unworthy pictures with which sensual artists had desecrated the churches, and calling the people back by their exhortations to the purity of primitive Christianity.

Father Antonio was a younger brother of Elsie, and had early become a member of the San Marco, enthusiastic not less in religion than in Art.  His intercourse with his sister had few points of sympathy, Elsie being as decided a utilitarian as any old Yankee female born in the granite hills of New Hampshire, and pursuing with a hard and sharp energy her narrow plan of life for Agnes.  She regarded her brother as a very properly religious person, considering his calling, but was a little bored with his exuberant devotion, and absolutely indifferent to his artistic enthusiasm.  Agnes, on the contrary, had from a child attached herself to her uncle with all the energy of a sympathetic nature, and his yearly visits had been looked forward to on her part with intense expectation.  To him she could say a thousand things which she instinctively concealed from her grandmother; and Elsie was well pleased with the confidence, because it relieved her a little from the vigilant guardianship that she otherwise held over the girl.  When Father Antonio was near, she had leisure now and then for a little private gossip of her own, without the constant care of supervising Agnes.

“Dear uncle, how glad I am to see you once more!” was the eager salutation with which the young girl received the monk, as he gained the little garden.  “And you have brought your pictures;—­oh, I know you have so many pretty things to show me!”

“Well, well, child,” said Elsie, “don’t begin upon that now.  A little talk of bread and cheese will be more in point.  Come in, brother, and wash your feet, and let me beat the dust out of your cloak, and give you something to stay Nature; for you must be fasting.”

“Thank you, sister,” said the monk; “and as for you, pretty one, never mind what she says.  Uncle Antonio will show his little Agnes everything by-and-by.—­A good little thing it is, sister.”

“Yes, yes,—­good enough,—­and too good,” said Elsie, bustling about;—­“roses can’t help having thorns, I suppose.”

“Only our ever-blessed Rose of Sharon, the dear mystical Rose of Paradise, can boast of having no thorns,” said the monk, bowing and crossing himself devoutly.

Agnes clasped her hands on her bosom and bowed also, while Elsie stopped with her knife in the middle of a loaf of black bread, and crossed herself with somewhat of impatience,—­like a worldly-minded person of our day, who is interrupted in the midst of an observation by a grace.