drawn up into innumerable wrinkles, and with black eyes of intolerable brightness, blazing out of deep and faded sockets.  Staggered by this unearthly contrast, I fell back upon the bench of the gondola, and gazed in silent horror at the stranger, who answered not the blunt questions of Jacopo; and, as if ashamed of her astounding ugliness, sat motionless and shrouded from head to foot in her capacious mantle.  I followed her into the church; but, unable to hold out during the mass, I left her there and hastily returned to sketch this sublime example of the hideous before any of its points had faded from my memory.  Forgive me, father, for yielding to an impulse so strong as to overwhelm all power of resistance.  Yet why should I abandon this rare opportunity of displaying any skill I may have gained from so gifted a teacher?  Pictures of Madonnas and of lovely women so abound in all our palaces, that a young artist can only rise above the common level by representing something extraordinary, something rarely or never seen in life.”

Contarini gazed with sorrowing and affectionate interest upon the flushed features of his pupil, again excited as before by his own description of the mysterious stranger.  One less acquainted with human nature, would have mistaken the flashing eyes and animated features of the youthful artist for the sure tokens of conscious and advancing talent; but the aged painter, whose practised eye was not dazzled by the soft harmony of features which gave a character of feminine beauty to Antonio, saw in the excitement which failed to give a more intellectual character to his countenance, sad evidence of a soul too feeble and infirm of purpose to achieve eminence in any thing, and with growing alarm he inferred a predisposition to mental disease from those morbid and uncontrolled impulses, which delighted in portraying objects revolting to all men of sound and healthy feelings.

He arose in evident emotion, and after pacing the studio some time in silence, he approached Antonio, who, yielding to his eccentric longings, had seized the sketch of the old woman’s head, and was gazing on it with evident delight.  “Give me the sketch, Antonio!” resumed the painter in his kindest tone, “’Tis finished, and the hunter cares not for the hunted beast when stricken.  What wouldst thou with it?” “What would I, maestro?” exclaimed the alarmed youth, hastily removing his sketch from the extended hand of the painter, “Finish the subject of course, and place this wonderful old head upon the magnificent form to which it belongs.”

“But, saidst thou not, Antonio, that the poor creature in the gondola hastily concealed her features when accident revealed them, as if ashamed of her unnatural ugliness?  And canst thou be so heartless as to publish to the world that strange deformity she is doomed to bear through life, and which she is evidently anxious to conceal?  Wouldst thou add another pang to the existence of one to whom life