Yes! facetious reader, it was even so! The Signora's gallant Marchese was none other than the Signor's ungallant stranger, a gentleman better known in the romance of highway robbery as VIRTUOSO, the brigand! and who, in the glowing language of one of the many instructive novels, of which he afterwards became the hero, "was no vulgar Freebooter." No! his was a spirit too proud to beg, too chivalrous to work, and too generous to trade. If he took from the rich he freely gave to the poor; and if, in the pursuance of his romantic vocation, he was compelled, in self-defence, to sacrifice the life of some obstinate victim, he ever after endeavoured to remove the stain of the blood from his soul by the scouring drops of contrition. Nor was his love of the poor greater than his love of—WOMAN! To her his lustrous eye and soft guitar-like voice, coupled with the perils of his adventurous life, had ever a magical charm. He was not merely the Freebooter of Lucre, but—the Brigand of the Heart! And if his passion was of too fickle and roving a nature, at least in extenuation it may be pleaded that he never parted from the object of his love without first abstracting from her some article of jewellery or plate, by which to treasure up her remembrance. However, to return to poor Goffoni. The day of his trial at length arrived. On being placed in the dock it seemed to him as if he were standing on the doorstep of Eternity; for reflection and everybody had conspired to assure him of the utter hopelessness of his case. And when, to his infinite horror, he heard the drover, without the least hesitation, swear that he, the Signor, was the man who had taken his purse, Goffoni felt as though his shoulders had already served his head with notice to quit. The judge, however, finding that the case turned on a point of disputed identity, ordered the prisoner to put on the hat which had been dropped on the road. Goffoni did so, and was suffused with a cold perspiration on finding that it fitted him to a hair. He was then directed to endorse his body with the cloak, which, alas! also suited the poor devil as though it had been made to measure. The drover looked at him for a second, and then swore with even greater certainty than before that he was the identical person who had robbed him. Goffoni now saw that the sands of his last moments were fast running through the egg-boiler of his existence, when—as the gentlemen of the Italian press afterwards expressed it—"a stranger, dressed in the first style of fashion, rose from the body of the court, and requested to be permitted to put on the articles in which the prisoner had just appeared." Having obtained the sanction of the judge, he attired himself in the cloak and hat, and demanded of the drover, on his oath, whether he, the stranger, was not the party who had taken his purse? The drover eyed the stranger from top to toe, and then, after a little deliberation, swore even still more emphatically that he was.