"This letter gave great delight to Beatrice, who desiring but the death of the sinner, wished for nothing more than that his rival should fall beneath Jacintho's hand. While anxiously awaiting for so christianly a gratification, it happened, however, that her own brother, having chanced to quarrel with this same Jacintho, came to blows with her champion, and fell pierced with wounds of which he died. Although duty prompted Donna Beatrice to avenge her brother's death by citing his murderer before the tribunals of his country, she neglected to do so, as this would have interfered with her revenge; which demonstrates, if such proof were needed, that there is no interest so dear to a woman as that of her beauty. Need I remind you, that when Ajax violated Cassandra in the temple of Pallas, that goddess did not on the instant punish the sacrilegious Greek? No! she reserved her wrath until its victim should have first redressed the insult offered to her charms by the Judgment of the hated Paris. But, alas! Donna Beatrice, less fortunate than Minerva, never tasted the sweetness of her anticipated vengeance. Romarate perished by the sword of the chevalier, and chagrin for her wrongs, still unpunished, drove the lady into this asylum. "The next who offer themselves to your notice are an attorney's grandmother and an aged marchioness. The ill-temper of the first so annoyed her descendant, that he very quietly got rid of her by placing her here: the other is a lady who has ever been an idol to herself, and instead of aging with becoming resignation, has never ceased to weep the decay of that beauty which formed her only happiness; and at last, one day, when her mirror told, too plainly to be doubted, that all her charms were flown, went mad." "So much the better for the ancient dame," added Leandro. "In the derangement of her mind, she will no more perceive the ravages of time." "Most assuredly not," replied the Devil; "far from beholding in her face the marks of age, her complexion seems to her now a happy blending of the lily and the rose; she sees around her but the Graces and the Loves,--in a word, she thinks that she is Venus herself." "Ah! well!" exclaimed the Student, "were it not better that thousands should be mad, than that they should know themselves for what they are?" "Undoubtedly," replied Asmodeus; "but come, we have only one other female to observe; and that is she who dwells in the furthest room, and whom sleep has just visited with rest, after three days and nights of raving. Look at her well! What think you of the Donna Emerenciana?" "That she is beautiful, indeed," answered Zambullo. "What horror, that so lovely a creature should be mad! By what fatal accident is she reduced to this dreadful situation?" "Listen!" replied the Demon; "I will tell you the story of her woes.