What he seemed to fear when they left him, soon came to pass.  With solitude Lucifer returned; and he now presented himself so frequently, and in such awful colours to Spinello’s mind, that the little fabric of health which had been reared with so much care, was quickly thrown down, while visions of horror swept over the ruins.  His health, which now declined more rapidly than ever, was soon irrecoverably destroyed; his frame wasted visibly away; and as his body grew weaker, his visions increased in horror, until at length the intellect tottered upon its basis, and almost gave way beneath their intolerable pressure.  In a few weeks he was shrunk to a skeleton, while his eyes shone with preternatural brilliancy; so that the people of the house where he lodged, were terrified at his appearance and avoided his looks.  For his own part, he was scarcely conscious, of the existence of the external world, every thing around him appearing like the creations of a dream—­mere shadows with whom he could have no sympathy.  There seemed, in fact, to be but two beings in the universe—­himself and Lucifer; and he felt that he was engaged in a struggle which must terminate the existence of the one or the other.  When he succeeded in freeing himself for a moment from the fangs of this vision, and could repel it to some little distance from his mental eye, he perceived, as distinctly as possible, its illusory nature, and wondered at the power it exerted over his imagination.  If, however, he obtained a momentary respite of this kind, it was not, as in the case of Prometheus (whose vulture was of the same brood as his demon), by night, but at sunrise, when the god of the Magi stepped, as it were, upon his throne to receive the homage of the earth.  The hour of repose, as night is to the fortunate and the happy, was to him the hour of torture; and he daily lingered about the sea-shore, anxiously watching the setting sun, and trembling more and more as the glorious luminary approached the termination of his career and disappeared behind the purple waves.  As soon as darkness descended upon the earth, Lucifer, if absent before, invariably alighted with it, and stood beside his victim, who clapping his hands upon his eyes, would fly with a howl or a shriek towards the habitations of men.

At length he became convinced that his last hour drew near; and he blessed God that his struggle was about to terminate.  As soon as this idea took possession of his mind, he grew a little more tranquil; and, excepting when he thought of Beatrice, awaited the final hour with a kind of satisfaction.  In this pious mood of mind, he one evening wandered to his usual haunt on the seaside.  The sun had set—­the moon and all the stars were in heaven—­and the earth and the sea were sleeping in the silver light.  He set him down on a lofty rock overhanging the sea, which was deep and still in that part; and with the waves on his left, and the earth in all its loveliness on his right, he raised his eyes towards