That evening, Father Dominick, our excellent priest, and my tutor in the classics, was closeted for a length of time with my afflicted nominal parents; and two days afterwards taking me with him to his monastery, he introduced me to the superior, as an orphan, the child of dear and particular friends, confided by them to his charge for education upon their death-bed, and with a distinct understanding that I was not bound to take upon myself monastic vows, the superior allowed me to remain with him as a boarder. Serventius and Artemisia I never more beheld, and every inquiry respecting them which I ventured to make of Father Dominick, was checked with a strange, sad look, and an admonition to mention them no more. Seven long and peaceful years, I spent in the monastery; and at the expiration of that period, was placed by my guardian in the house of the celebrated Doctor Sanazio of Padua, as a student of medicine. Here, novel and delightful studies, speculations, and scenes, opened upon my inquisitive, ardent mind, and amused my enthusiastic imagination. Sanazio was regarded in learned Padua, as little less than a demi-god; at certain hours he visited his patients, amongst whom might generally be numbered three-fourths of the population of Padua; at certain hours, his own mansion was crowded like the audience-hall of some mighty potentate, with supplicants for food and physic; three evenings in the week were devoted by him to intense study in his own secret, solitary chamber; and upon the alternate three, he received the visits of those who desired to consult him upon abstruse points, only properly to be solved by an acquaintance with the occult sciences. In brief, my honoured master, I soon discovered, was reckoned a very fair conjuror; he consulted the stars, drew horoscopes, cast nativities, was learned in the expositions of dreams and omens, undertook to give information respecting lost property, and matrimonial prospects; composed, and dispensed charms and philtres, and proved himself, as I have hinted, a capital astrologer, and something more. How Sanazio, who certainly was a very extraordinary man, acquired his multifarious information, unless really by supernatural agency, I am at a loss to discover. Ignatius Druso, my fellow student, was of opinion that he only dexterously availed himself in the evening of the news which he had gathered from his patients in the morning; and that his familiars were no more than a few active emissaries, for whose espionage and additional gleanings of town news, it answered to him well, to pay. Ever partial to romance, I did not readily fall in with Druso's sober view of this subject, and the longer I lived with Doctor Sanazio, the more occasion had I to doubt the correctness of his opinion, because some things occurred of which my master obtained immediate and accurate knowledge, whilst I am perfectly certain that no human tongue had divulged them to him; take the