pair of friends they were customary. Supporting each other, they made
their way bravely through a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little
streets in quest of their personal objects; one seeking for painted
madonnas, the other for madonnas of flesh and blood.

In what part of Tarragona it happened I cannot say, but Diard
presently recognized by its architecture the portal of a convent, the
gate of which was already battered in. Springing into the cloister to
put a stop to the fury of the soldiers, he arrived just in time to
prevent two Parisians from shooting a Virgin by Albano. In spite of
the moustache with which in their military fanaticism they had
decorated her face, he bought the picture. Montefiore, left alone
during this episode, noticed, nearly opposite the convent, the house
and shop of a draper, from which a shot was fired at him at the moment
when his eyes caught a flaming glance from those of an inquisitive
young girl, whose head was advanced under the shelter of a blind.
Tarragona taken by assault, Tarragona furious, firing from every
window, Tarragona violated, with dishevelled hair, and half-naked, was
indeed an object of curiosity,--the curiosity of a daring Spanish
woman. It was a magnified bull-fight.

Montefiore forgot the pillage, and heard, for the moment, neither the
cries, nor the musketry, nor the growling of the artillery. The
profile of that Spanish girl was the most divinely delicious thing
which he, an Italian libertine, weary of Italian beauty, and dreaming
of an impossible woman because he was tired of all women, had ever
seen. He could still quiver, he, who had wasted his fortune on a
thousand follies, the thousand passions of a young and blase man--the
most abominable monster that society generates. An idea came into his
head, suggested perhaps by the shot of the draper-patriot, namely,--to