Familiar as both travellers were with this _locale_, they had yet difficulty in getting their horses forward, so completely dark were the narrow streets, and encumbered with rubbish of every description. They had looked for a light by the shrine of "Our Lady of Grace;" but even the hopes of the pious were fled; not a shrine in all Florence had a taper now burning before it. The splendid and extensive Palazzo di Borgo, the mansion of the family of Antilla, lay in their way; but its lords had left all for life, and fled to Lucca; and the huge building, towering above all but ruin--frowned in dark and sullen silence. They passed, still amid the signs of emptiness and dilapidation, over the Piazza Santa Croce--the great area for gymnastic exercises of the city; crossed the narrow bridge, with the rivulet and sewer, which ran under the walls of the Church of St Jacops tra i Fossi; but so fearfully was the population diminished, and so deep the dread which (except a few desperate wretches) the survivors had of each other, that the busiest streets of the city, and the most gorgeous squares and terraces, were all alike wrapped in gloom and desertion. Nor was it until turning northwards, and winding for some time in the direction of the river, they reached the Piazza Santa Maria--the square in which stood the "Spedale," or great hospital of Florence--that any decided signs of life and activity, or, indeed, of human existence, presented themselves. At this point, however, there was light and activity enough--and both riders instinctively tightened their reins, as a sharp turning at right angles threw them in front of the "Spedale;" for so sudden a change, from the thickest darkness to a glare of illumination--as of a thousand lamps alight at once--might have startled many steeds, worse tutored, or less true.