THE TWO COUSINS.

BY G. E. INMAN.

THE sun was just dawning on a summer morning, early in the sixteenth century, when two young nobles, Luigi and Ugo Arrighetti, staggered out of a tavern in Florence.

"What cursed ill luck!" said the former to his cousin, after a pause. "Not a dollar left!"

"And what the foul fiend can'st thou expect? Playing 'gainst professed gamblers, cool, wary, and calculating; and thou, hot-headed at all times, now more than ever so with wine!"

"By Mary Mother!" returned Luigi, with drunken solemnity, "I am as sober at this moment as-as-whoso dares deny it is a fool and a liar !—and there's my gage!" And so saying, he hurled down his glove.

Ugo had taken him by the arm, and they were about to pass on, when a hungry cur prowling about snatched up the glove, and was making off with it. Luigi whipped out his sword, crying,

"What ho! thou whoreson hound!-thou to take up a gentleman's challenge! There's that will teach thee manners!" And running the blade through the beast's body, he turned with a loud laugh to his companion, and walked on.

Luigi and Ugo Arrighetti were cousins; but the friendship they bore each other surpassed even that of brothers. They were inseparable. Though differing in tempers, they sympathized in tastes; and, although unequal in fortune, Luigi, the younger, being immensely rich, and Ugo comparatively poor, still this made no distinction. The expenses of the course of dissipation which they together carried on were defrayed peremptorily by the wealthier. The circumstance that Ugo, if he outlived his cousin, would become his heir, probably rendered this arrangement palatable.

As they now walked on together, Luigi muttered to himself, "A dog! the blood of a dog!-a gentleman's sword defiled by the blood of a mangy cur! Marry, it shall no longer disgrace my side, or that of any one else!"

So saying, he snapped the bloody weapon across his knee, and hurled the fragments on a dunghill hard by.

Mary Mother!" cried his companion, "if you go on in this way, you ought to be made of money. Three thousand ducats yonder, and a Spanish blade worth a hundred! 'Tis too extravagant!"

"Too extravagant !-tush, man!" rejoined his half-drunken companion. "Ha! ha! ha! Why, I have gold enough in yon old tower of mine to buy all Florence, - men, women, and children,-— souls, bodies and all!"

"Thou?-thou 'rt dreaming, man! How couldst thou get the gold thou speak'st of? Thy father was rich, I know well, but not to that extent."

"He never displayed it," said Luigi; and after a pause, he continued, in the warmth of his heart, "Ügo, I think I may trust thee. I was bidden never to mention its existence to any one; but to thee I will-yes, I will even show my treasures. Follow me."

They had arrived at the little gate of one of those towers which

the turbulence of the dark ages had rendered necessary to every palazzo for its protection. The two Arrighettis entered, and, mounting a small winding staircase, which went entirely round inside, arrived at last at the door of the highest chamber; Luigi opened it, and they entered.

It was a small square vaulted room, lighted by barred apertures on three sides; on the fourth, instead of a window, was a kind of mausoleum of white marble; from two slabs or panels of the same material, but black, in front of it, a handle of alabaster projected. In front of this cabinet was a platform of coloured marble, about four feet square, and raised half a foot from the floor. On its edge were engraven words in Latin to this effect, "This monument was erected by the cunning workman Andreas," and in the same line, but evidently added afterwards, the words, " for himself!"

Luigi stepped upon the platform, and putting his hand on a small knob in one of the ornaments cut in the monument, the doors flew open with a spring, and displayed to Ugo a small chamber, literally piled up with gold. Luigi smiled at his amazement, and closing the doors, exclaimed, " Said I not true, my bold heart? Said I not true, Messer Ugo?" Then taking him by the arm, he prepared to go down.

Ugo stood still, as though stupified with wonderment. At last he said,

"Good God! Luigi, this is astonishing! But how came it here? Who first gathered together all this wealth?"

"That I know not; but it has descended to us through several generations. On my father's death, the secret was found among his papers, under a sealed cover, addressed to me. You would also have found it among mine, on my decease."

""Tis strange!" said Ugo. "But how easy, too, for it to be stolen!"

"Not so, my friend," said Luigi, "unless you know the secret. Now, Ugo, give me your left hand, and as you stand here with your sword, just touch that alabaster handle, which appears to open the doors. But first, do not be nervous."

As Ugo touched the handle the doors flew open, and at the same moment the marble platform fell down like a flap, and displayed to the cousins an immense pit, wherein were revolving in every direction, by some dreadful machinery, an innumerable quantity of swordblades fixed on pivots-an oubliette.

Ugo shuddered, and clung to his cousin in an agony of dread. The horrible abyss remained open for a few seconds, and then closed again.

"And who devised this fearful place?" asked Ugo.

"I know not; but the legend runs that it was executed at the command of one of our ancestry by a machinist named Andreas, as the inscription here tells us; that the lord, when it was finished, fearing lest the workman might divulge the secret, took the opportunity of touching the knob while he stood upon the slab; and thus Andreas died by his own invention-a second Phalaris."

Ugo stood looking on in mute terror. "Heavens!" he said, "that a man could have the heart to execute such a design!"

He still did not move. He stood absorbed in thought. The sword hanging listlessly in his hand.

""Tis as wonderful a piece of mechanism as it is dreadful!" continued Luigi. "You see it is as firm now as when I stood on it the first time I opened the hoard!" and again he stepped on the platform.

A thought passed like lightning through the brain of Ugo.

"How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds

Makes ill deeds done !"

Ugo rushed out of the tower like a madman.

He was ALONE!

In the course of the day the dead body of Luigi, dreadfully mangled, was discovered in the Arno,-into which river the oubliette descended. His broken sword and single glove had been before found in the street, near the tavern at which he had spent the evening. Blood had been found on the pavement. It was conjectured that he had been engaged in some drunken quarrel, and, overpowered by numbers, been murdered; and a murder was too common in those days to excite much attention. The zeal with which Ugo apparently sought the discovery of his dear friend's murderer, removed all suspicion of his own guilt. The affair dropped, and he entered upon his kinsman's titles and estates with undisputed honour.

But he was no longer the same man. It was not so much remorse as horror which ate into his heart: for the commission of the crime was as much repented of as it was unpremeditated. There are moments when men have been irresistibly impelled to do wrong, despite their better feeling. Ugo's crime was one of those moments. It was as though the DEVIL had BODILY bade him do it.

His life had now become a life of misery!

He was rich, and consequently courted. He was a bachelor, consequently fêted. Still he himself was miserable, and fondly deemed any change must prove an alleviation. He married.

His wife was of a family both rich and proud; of a temper naturally imperious, rendered yet more so by the recollection of Ugo's former poverty, and the inattention with which he now treated her. She played the part of an incarnate demon.

He was more miserable than ever!

At the commencement of the second year of their marriage the Lady Arrighetti died after a short illness, leaving her husband one daughter, named Costanza.

The little girl grew up under the care of her father-a darling, of course. She did what she liked: she went where she liked: she enjoyed herself as she liked: she was the one only solace to the murderer's scathed heart.

When about seven years of age she had watched her father continually going to and fro to the Dark Tower. One afternoon she followed him up the staircase; and creeping softly up, saw him filling bags with gold from the dreadful treasury. Ugo was busy removing the coin into the vaults of the Palazzo. He worked at it strenuously for many weeks, until every piece of metal was stowed in the cellars. He then closed the old tower for ever. Ugo died, raving mad, at a time when his daughter was just on the point of being married to a distant relation of the Arrighetti family. The wedding was, of course, postponed for a time.

The discovery of the immense wealth concealed in the cellars of

her late father naturally caused considerable surprise at the time. Costanza was the more overjoyed at it as it gave her lover, or rather affianced husband, a surprise! She had another in store for him! Months had elapsed, and Costanza and her beloved were man and wife. 66 Dearest," said she to him one afternoon, "I have a secret to tell you. You know what wealth was found in my father's cellars. What would you give me for showing thee ten times as much?" "I would give it all to thee back," said the young bridegroom, "for one of thy sweet kisses."

"What nonsense, Guglielmo," answered the bride, laughing. "I tell you I am in earnest. At the top of that old closed-up tower of ours there is an immensity of wealth. I peeped through the keyhole one day, when I was a little girl, and I saw my father counting it over."

"Nonsense-nonsense, Costanza!" said her husband. "Woman's curiosity. The tower has been shut up so many years, and you have never seen it, and want to see what it is like. Is not that it, love?"

"I have never seen it!" said Costanza, rather angrily." Never been up that tower! Dear Guglielmo, 'twas but a week or two after I went up, and saw him busy with the gold, as I told you, that he had it closed. The servants said that ghosts, and such like nonsense, haunted it; but I think he caught me peeping, and did not choose that I should know anything more of his hoards there than of those in the vaults."

"Costanza, woman's curiosity!" said her husband, holding his finger up to her reproachfully and laughingly.

"Put it down to woman's curiosity, if you will," said his young wife, laughing; "but give me my will for once, sweet, and then, if you do not reward me handsomely, foul befal thy generosity."

Guglielmo kissed his wife, and bade lights be brought, with the keys of the Old Tower.

Arm in arm they ascended the circular staircase! They entered the topmost room! They stepped on the marble platform! They touched the spring! The treasury doors sprung open! It was empty!

And- the bodies of Guglielmo and Costanza were next day found in the Arno!

THE SOUL-AGENT.

A GERMAN ROMANCE.

CHAPTER I.

"Höre viel-glaube wenig!"

IN WHICH THE HEROINE AND HER PARENT ARE INTRODUCED AND DESCRIBED.

On the summit of a savage-looking rock, raggedly arborified with larch and pine, which gave it the appearance of a rude gigantic head, with dishevelled hair and untrimmed whiskers, stood the castle of the hard-headed, ill-favoured, and deep-drinking Baron von Felskopf.

Felskopf had been a soldier of fortune, and accumulated a handsome property during the wars, by the unflinching exercise of might over right. He had, moreover, won the hand of a fair Saxon lady, and lost an eye. Some of his neighbours were charitable enough to attribute his excessive libations to this cause, we mean the loss of his eye, averring that he thereby compensated his misfortune by continually being in a state to see double with his solitary optic.

He was a harsh master, and a strict disciplinarian, one of those who would ruthlessly hang an old dog when he had lost his teeth in his service. Then he had been so hammered during his campaigns, that he was as hard as a piece of flint. He used to boast of his being a philosopher; but the fact is, his stoicism was the result of insensibility. If any attempt were made to excite his sympathy for another's woe, he would laugh outright, quaintly closing his monocular window, and exclaiming,

"Fire away!-volley after volley !-all in vain! Baron von Felskopf is flint-FLINT! What! are men's miseries strong mustard or onions, forsooth! that they should draw tears from me? Bah!"

Such was this redoubtable baron, who had a daughter,- an only daughter of course!-whose angel mother yielded up her gentle spirit in giving birth to this pledge—of a most unhappy union-of course!"

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Adeline was Reader! have you ever been in the palace of the Graf Leopold Kreutzler of Nuremburg?-in the forecourt of that delightful abode of wit, learning, and urbanity,-in the very centre of that forecourt stands a chef-d'œuvre from the chisel of Mentz, representing a hideous marine monster supporting a sea-born Venus, the whole skilfully wrought from a single block !—Adeline was that Venus, Felskopf was that monster! - and yet fantastic nature had hewn them from the same block!

CHAPTER II.

"Was willst du heute für ein Fest bereiten, dass du so frühe dein Körbchen voll Blumen sammelst ? "

ADELINE EARLY ABROAD, AND THE BARON QUITE ABROAD.

THE jolly sun had scarcely peeped forth from the cloudy curtains of his bed when the light-footed Adeline was brushing the dew from