ZICCI


A TALE.


BOOK I.




CHAPTER I.


In the gardens at Naples, one summer evening in the last century, some
four or five gentlemen were seated under a tree drinking their sherbet
and listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which
enlivened that gay and favorite resort of an indolent population. One
of this little party was a young Englishman who had been the life of the
whole group, but who for the last few moments had sunk into a gloomy and
abstracted revery. One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom,
and tapping him on the back, said, "Glyndon, why, what ails you? Are
you ill? You have grown quite pale; you tremble: is it a sudden chill?
You had better go home; these Italian nights are often dangerous to our
English constitutions."

"No, I am well now,--it was but a passing shudder; I cannot account for
it myself."

A man apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and