The Mysteries of Florence

He shuddered in the very act. Clear and distinct, the harsh outline of the withered brow, pressed against his hand, and he could feel the eye sunken far in its socket, and the c...

And then busily plying the spade, in a cracked voice he sang the following words, in a sort of wild chaunt, which he occasionally varied by sounds that resembled the yell of a s...

While dark and fearful imaginings haunted her soul, and well nigh crazed her brain, the fair and gentle Ladye Annabel felt a strange and deadening sleep stealing over her frame,...

A lamp of iron, all rusted and time-eaten, suspended from the arched ceiling of a small apartment of the convent of St. Benedict, reserved in especial for strangers, threw a dim...

“He is gone,” the sentinel murmured, slowly pacing the tesselated floor. “He comes like a cat--he glides hence like a ghost. Hark! footsteps from opposite corridors meeting in t...

With every sinew stiffened, and with every vein chilled by the damp of subterranean vaults, scarce able to breathe in the putrid air which had never known light of sunbeam, his...

There was something so strange and solemn in the entire aspect of the place--the light blue flame arising in tongues of fire from the vessel of gold on the snow-white altar, bur...

As gay a bridal party as ever the sun shone upon, waited within the walls of the chapel of St. George. They waited for the coming of the bridegroom and bride.

“Then it was in times of blood-shed and slaughter, in the day of foul misrule and galling wrong, when the grim bravo whetted his knife on the stones of the altar, and the corses...

“Pity me, Ibrahim, pity me!” shrieked Aldarin. “Swayed by two mingling and opposing motives--the one, ambition for the welfare of my child--the other, the all-absorbing desire f...

“I would pray,” he exclaimed meekly, as pressing the clasps of the missal, it flew open, discovering not the leaves of a book of prayer, but a hollow casket. Taking a small phia...

“Nay, nay, good youth,” exclaimed a soft and whispered voice at his very shoulder. “Be not alarmed, ’tis but a festal scene. One hundred years from this night we all thronged yo...

Around, all dark and time-worn, the walls of the castle--each casement blazing with torches--looked down upon various groups of the peasantry and servitors of Albarone, some eng...

“Mother,” said he, “I must away to the convent. Methinks it were better for gentle Florian to rest him here awhile. I will return anon, and accompany my fellow scholar along the...

“Man of blood and crime,” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword, as he advanced to the side of Aldarin, “thy life has been full of dark and fearful mystery; hast thou no dying...

In a moment it stood beside the prostrate forms of the father and child, and having gazed at them for an instant, it threw back the robe from its head, and the beams of the lamp...

Robin the Rough advanced, and grasping a thong, twisted out of the wild bull’s hide, from the hands of one of the men-at-arms, slowly wound the cord around the body of one of th...

“Behold!” cried the monk, “Adrian Di Albarone, behold this countenance, where youth, and health, and love, beaming from every feature, mingle with the deep expression of a mind...

“Louder rose the voice within the cell, and louder and fiercer swelled the exclamations of the sentinels; until having strained every bone in my body, with excessive laughter, I...

XII. Dive into your heart and seek the Cause of all this. Do you find it in the magnificent temples; the armies of hired priests, the volumes of Cumbrous rituals? This is the ma...

And as he spoke, the Count Aldarin strode toward the door, his face flushed by a wild glow of exultation, as he communed with himself in a low, murmured tone.

The Warrior seized Aldarin by the shoulder, and dragged him slowly along the rock, but the flesh he clenched, crumbled in his grasp. Aldarin again trembled over the verge of the...

Around, on every side, in rugged grandeur, extended the rocky walls; and far in the distance, the solid pavement seemed to grow larger and wider, as the gazer looked upon its su...

It was, in sooth, a noble hound, with full chest, slender limbs, long neck, and tapering body, marked by all that delicacy of proportion, that beauty of shape, and grace of moti...

AUTHOR OF “THE EMPIRE CITY, OR NEW YORK BY NIGHT AND DAY,” “THE MEMOIRS OF A PREACHER,” “WASHINGTON AND HIS MEN,” “THE LEGENDS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, OR, WASHINGTON AND HIS...

And while the peasant-group, the three buxom damsels, and the light-brained postillion, shrunk back from the touch of the distorted being with disgust, and stood thrilled with t...