of white lily, with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green leaves, such as one sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation.  The moonlight fell full upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful features, agitated by some profound emotion.  The monk and the girl were both too much surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after an instant, the monk made a half-movement as if to address him, the cavalier raised his right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced him.  Then turning toward Agnes, he kneeled, and kissing the hem of her robe, and laying the lily in her lap, “Holiest and dearest,” he said, “oh, forget not to pray for me!” He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly descending into the shadows of the gorge.

All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a dream.  The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing, and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen of the Lord, in divine solitudes.  In the poetical world in which he lived all such marvels were possible.  There were a thousand precedents for them in that devout dream-land, “The Lives of the Saints.”

“My daughter,” he said, after looking vainly down the dark shadows upon the path of the stranger, “have you ever seen this man before?”

“Yes, uncle; yesterday evening I saw him for the first time, when sitting at my stand at the gate of the city.  It was at the Ave Maria; he came up there and asked my prayers, and gave me a diamond ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes, which I carried to the Convent to-day.”

“Behold, my dear daughter, the confirmation of what I have just said to thee!  It is evident that our Lady hath endowed thee with the great grace of a beauty which draws the soul upward towards the angels, instead of downward to sensual things, like the beauty of worldly women.  What saith the blessed poet Dante of the beauty of the holy Beatrice?—­that it said to every man who looked on her, ’Aspire!’[A] Great is the grace, and thou must give special praise therefor.”

[Footnote A:  I cannot forbear quoting Mr. Norton’s beautiful translation of this sonnet in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1859:—­

  “So gentle and so modest doth appear
  My lady when she giveth her salute,
  That every tongue becometh trembling mute,
  Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare,
  And though she hears her praises, she doth, go
  Benignly clothed with humility,
  And like a thing come down she seems to be
  From heaven to earth, a miracle to show. 
  So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,
  She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes
  Which none can understand who doth not prove. 
  And from her lip there seems indeed to move
  A spirit sweet and in Love’s very guise,
  Which goeth saying to the soul, ‘Aspire!’”]