Into the churches also, like other mendicants, he was allowed freely to enter; and thus it befell, that one bright and beautiful evening, though at a late hour, when the sun had gone down, he sat staring on an opposite empty wall, and filled it in imagination with the paintings which his genius was yet fully competent to execute. While he sat thus absorbed in reverie, he saw two female figures, who, silently and with noiseless steps, approached him. Their countenances were veiled, so that he had no perception of their features; but, with a voice that rose on his ears like celestial music, one of them addressed to him the following admonition:-- "In the remote land of East Prussia is the celebrated Convent of the Holy Lime-Tree, wherein Providence has vouchsafed to shew many miracles; but the magnificent chapel there erected is yet without any ornaments of painting. Go thither, then! Let the practice of your art as a painter become to you an exercise of devotion, and your now desponding soul will be refreshed with heavenly consolation!" With these words, the two female figures melted away in a gleam of light, and left the air filled with the fragrance of roses and lilies. Francesco was convinced of the supernatural character of these visitants, and resolved that he would on the following day begin his pilgrimage. On that same evening it happened, that a servant of Zenobio's, after much trouble, found him out, paid him two years' arrears of his allotted income, and invited him kindly to his brother's court. * * * * * Thus far the old painter had written of himself in the third person, which, in his later memoranda, he exchanges for the first. I consider it needless to transcribe his historical account of the various fortunes and intricate relationships of that illegitimate race which he had founded, and of which I am a descendant. No reader would take the trouble of following out a detail which could scarcely be understood, unless thrown into the form of a genealogical tree. Besides, the mind revolts from the contemplation of enormous and complicated guilt! Suffice it to say, that the child which had been left in the cave was accidentally found and preserved; that a small ivory cup, which, along with the bottle of the devil's elixir, was discovered at the same time, bore, for an inscription, the painter's name, Francesco, by which the boy was afterwards baptized.