A wondrous maiden sat wrapped in a white veil on a throne of the clearest alabaster. She never moved. She wore on her head a lotos-flower, and on her breast a carbuncle. The eye could not cease to gaze on the veiled maiden, for she stirred a longing in the bosom. Before her kneeled many little gnomes; the poor fellows were all of dropstone, all stalactites, and they wore little yellow crowns of the fairest alabaster. They never moved; but they all held their hands stretched out towards the white maiden, as if they wished to lift her veil, and bitter drops were falling from their eyes. It seemed to me as if I knew some of them, and as if I must call them by their names. "This is the goddess Isis," said the toad sneeringly; she was sitting on a stone, and, I think, threw a spell on them all with her eyes. "He who does not know the right word, and cannot raise the veil of the beautiful maiden, must weep himself to stone like these. Stranger, wilt thou say the word?" I was just falling asleep--for I was very tired, and the grotto was so dim and cool, and the drops tinkled so slowly and mournfully from the roof--when the gardener's daughter entered, and said: "It is time!" "Time! to raise the veil of Isis?--O ye eternal gods!" "Yes, Signore, to come out to the garden and the bright sun." I thought she said well, and I immediately followed her. "Do you see this firelock, Signore? We found it in the grotto, quite coated with the dropstone, and beside it were human bones; likely they were the bones and gun of a bandit; the poor wretch had crept into this cave, and died in it like a wounded deer." Nothing was now left of the piece but the rusty barrel. It may have sped the avenging bullet into more than one heart. Now I hold it in my hand like some fossil of horrid history, and it opens its mouth and tells me stories of the Vendetta. CHAPTER II. FROM BRANDO TO LURI. "Say, whither rov'st thou lonely through the hills, A stranger in the region?"--_Odyssey._ I now descended to Erba Lunga, an animated little coast village, which sends fishing-boats daily to Bastia. The oppressive heat compelled me to rest here for some hours.