torn by a struggle between the caution of prudent virtue and the evils
of wrong-doing. Often she loses a love, delightful in prospect, and
the first, if she resists; on the other hand, she loses a marriage if
she is imprudent. Casting a glance over the vicissitudes of social
life in Paris, it is impossible to doubt the necessity of religion;
and yet Paris is situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude,
while Tarragona is in the forty-first. The old question of climates is
still useful to narrators to explain the sudden denouements, the
imprudences, or the resistances of love.

Montefiore kept his eyes fixed on the exquisite black profile
projected by the gleam upon the wall. Neither he nor Juana could see
each other; a troublesome cornice, vexatiously placed, deprived them
of the mute correspondence which may be established between a pair of
lovers as they bend to each other from their windows. Thus the mind
and the attention of the captain were concentrated on that luminous
circle where, without perhaps knowing it herself, the young girl
would, he thought, innocently reveal her thoughts by a series of
gestures. But no! The singular motions she proceeded to make gave not
a particle of hope to the expectant lover. Juana was amusing herself
by cutting up his missive. But virtue and innocence sometimes imitate
the clever proceedings inspired by jealousy to the Bartholos of
comedy. Juana, without pens, ink, or paper, was replying by snip of
scissors. Presently she refastened the note to the string; the officer
drew it up, opened it, and read by the light of his lamp one word,
carefully cut out of the paper: COME.

"Come!" he said to himself; "but what of poison? or the dagger or
carbine of Perez? And that apprentice not yet asleep, perhaps, in the
shop? and the servant in her hammock? Besides, this old house echoes