"Poor man, he has been in sad trouble," replied his friend; "our reputation for magic here has risen somewhat too high for our security. We have had monitories from the holy office, warning our learned professors against permitting forbidden studies, and enjoining them strictly to seek out and deliver up to justice all those who practise black and damnable arts. Arnesi only laughed, and said that his was a black and white art, for that he dealt in pen and ink, but that he hoped the white would save the black part of the business. A number of the older signors, however, whose wits are rather on the wane, and who still fancy that everything they do not understand themselves is magic, took up the matter far more seriously, and laying their wise heads together in small conclave, determined they would seek out, and hand over to the tender mercies of those who roast the body to save the soul, every poor creature to whom suspicion could attach. Manucci had a long gray beard, a rusty black gown, but small reverence for the learned professors, paid no fees, kept himself apart in solitary studies, seldom spoke with anybody, and had a keen and spirit-searching eye. Here seemed a sorcerer at once, quite ready to their hand. Still such appearances, without proof, would not justify violence; but they judged that the search for proof would; and as I was passing the old man's door, near the Trevisogate, I saw the college beadle and three or four more officers making their way in against the resistance of the poor old woman who waits upon him, and who was assuring them with tears that her master was dying in his bed." "Dying!" exclaimed Lord Gowrie, with a start. "Well, I went in with them," continued Hume, not noticing his friend's exclamation; "and a pitiful sight I soon beheld." "In the name of Heaven, what?" demanded the Earl of Gowrie, with a pale cheek and an eager eye; and then feeling how completely the whole expression of his countenance must have changed, he added, "I was much interested in that old man. I knew him well, loved him well, and was going on a long promise to see him this very night." "Indeed!" said Hume, before he proceeded to finish his story, musing, as if some intricate problem was placed before him. "Ha! Well, as I was saying, I went in, following the officers--a few steps behind I might be, and then, when we came into the little back room, I saw a bed with a crucifix at the foot, and the old man lying on it, the image of death. His long beard was stretched upon the decently composed bed-clothes, hard to say which was the whitest; his left hand was folded quietly on his breast, and his right was stretched out over the side of the bed, with tightly pressed upon it the lips of the most beautiful girl I ever beheld in my life--with one sole exception," he added.