the high altar sway and move in the moonlight when it comes
streaming through the southern windows; and sometimes I have hoped--
and prayed--and hoped--but no vision came!"

The old monk sighed, and dropped his head upon his bosom; and
Paolina gazed at him with a feeling of awe, mingled with a suddenly
rising fear, that the tall and emaciated old man, whose light-blue
eyes gleamed out from beneath his cowl, was not wholly right in his
mind. She would have been more alarmed had she been aware that the
old Padre Fabiano of St. Apollinare was generally considered in
Ravenna to be crazed by all those who did not, instead of that, deem
him a saint.

Before she had gained courage to answer him, however, he lifted his
head, with another deep sigh, and said, in a very quiet and ordinary
tone and manner,

"Your scaffold is all prepared for you there, Signora, according to
the directions of the Signor Marchese Ludovico di Castelmare, who
brought with him an order from the Archbishop's Chancellor. Will you
look at it, and see if it is as you wish, and say where you wish to
have it placed."

The mosaics in the apse of the centre nave are the most remarkable
of those that remain at St. Apollinare, though many of the series of
medallion portraits of the Bishops of the See from the foundation of
it, which circle the entire nave, are very curious. Paolina had
engaged to copy two or three of the most remarkable of these; but
she intended to begin her work by attacking the larger figures in
the apse. And the scaffolding had been placed there on the southern