proudest of the proud Venetian senators, was handed by the stranger. The
procession then moved, and last, and most surprising of all, the
stranger, mounting a charger, put himself at the head of the cavalry,
and, making a profound adieu to the new governor, who stood shivering at
the window in care of a file of grenadiers, dashed forward on the road
to Milan.

Day rose, and the multitude rushed out to see what was become of the
city. Every thing was as it had been, but the column of the lion: its
famous emblem of the Venetian republic was gone, wings and all. They
exclaimed that the world had come to an end. But the wheel of fortune is
round, let politicians say what they will. In twelve months from that
day the old podesta was again sitting in the government-house--yet a
podesta no more, but a French prefect; the Signora Maria, his lovely
daughter, was sitting beside him, with an infant, the image of her own
beauty, and beside her the stranger, no longer the man of magic in the
scarlet cloak and green and vermilion striped cap with a topaz clasp,
but a French general of division, in blue and silver, her husband, as
handsome as ever, and, if not altogether a professed _Diavolo_, quite as
successful in finding money whenever he wanted it. His first _entree_
into Vicenza had been a little theatrical, for such is the genius of his
country. The blowing-up of his little steam-boat, which had nearly
furnished his drama with a tragic catastrophe, added to its effect; and
his discovery of the sequins was managed by three of his countrymen. As
an inquirer into the nakedness of the land, he might have been shot as a
spy. As half-charlatan and half-madman, he was sure of national
sympathy. During the three days of his stay the old podesta had found
himself accessible to reason, the podesta's daughter to the tender
passion, and the treasures of the state to the locomotive skill of the
French detachment, that waited in the mountains the result of their