“Four days!—­and thou canst give me no clue?”

“None—­yet stay, young man!”—­and the nun, approaching, lowered her voice to a hissing whisper—­“Ask the Becchini.” (According to the usual custom of Florence, the dead were borne to their resting-place on biers, supported by citizens of equal rank; but a new trade was created by the plague, and men of the lowest dregs of the populace, bribed by immense payment, discharged the office of transporting the remains of the victims.  These were called Becchini.)

Adrian started aside, crossed himself hastily, and quitted the convent without answer.  He returned to his horse, and rode back into the silenced heart of the city.  Tavern and hotel there were no more; but the palaces of dead princes were free to the living stranger.  He entered one—­a spacious and splendid mansion.  In the stables he found forage still in the manger; but the horses, at that time in the Italian cities a proof of rank as well as wealth, were gone with the hands that fed them.  The highborn Knight assumed the office of groom, took off the heavy harness, fastened his steed to the rack, and as the wearied animal, unconscious of the surrounding horrors, fell eagerly upon its meal, its young lord turned away, and muttered, “Faithful servant, and sole companion! may the pestilence that spareth neither beast nor man, spare thee! and mayst thou bear me hence with a lighter heart!”

A spacious hall, hung with arms and banners—­a wide flight of marble stairs, whose walls were painted in the stiff outlines and gorgeous colours of the day, conducted to vast chambers, hung with velvets and cloth of gold, but silent as the tomb.  He threw himself upon the cushions which were piled in the centre of the room, for he had ridden far that morning, and for many days before, and he was wearied and exhausted, body and limb; but he could not rest.  Impatience, anxiety, hope, and fear, gnawed his heart and fevered his veins, and, after a brief and unsatisfactory attempt to sober his own thoughts, and devise some plan of search more certain than that which chance might afford him, he rose, and traversed the apartments, in the unacknowledged hope which chance alone could suggest.

It was easy to see that he had made his resting-place in the home of one of the princes of the land; and the splendour of all around him far outshone the barbarous and rude magnificence of the less civilized and wealthy Romans.  Here, lay the lute as last touched—­the gilded and illumined volume as last conned; there, were seats drawn familiarly together, as when lady and gallant had interchanged whispers last.

“And such,” thought Adrian,—­“such desolation may soon swallow up the vestige of the unwelcomed guest, as of the vanished lord!”