then I heard the Angelus bell' of a neighboring church. On the instant I resolved to go and put myself under the protection of the sacred roof.

"In olden times, I said, the sanctuary was a safeguard, the very Spirit of Evil itself falling powerless at its threshold; and although no Catholic, I seemed to have unwavering faith.

"I went to the church and became a resident, for there was a religious order attached to it, and also many buildings. This order seemed to have secular as well as religious occupations; it was a large community.

"Soon after, I was standing in one of the reception or business rooms. A strange woman, looking like a traveller, entered, and asked to rent one of their halls; she wished to exhibit to the towns-people some curious things she had for show. The business arrangements were concluded. As the woman was leaving the hall, one of the members of the community came to me, holding in his hand a placard, printed in gay colors, saying, 'There is to be quite a curious show to-morrow evening,' and handed me the placard.

"It was an advertisement or bill of the woman's exhibition. To my horror, I saw at the head of it, in red letters, that seemed to scintillate, these words: A very curious Cobra de Capello, that is perfectly tame; so docile that it will perform anything its mistress bids it, as an intelligent dog would.'

"I let the placard drop, and, trembling in every fibre, looked towards the woman. She was just leaving the room, and her eyes rested on me with a smiling, triumphant expression. She was dressed not only plainly, but commonly; her face was perfectly unknown to me, yet I knew it was SHE! She had on her arm a small wicker

basket with lids, but both lids were thrown back, and I saw that the basket was empty. She left the room.

"Just as I was trying to command my agitation, I felt a sharp, stinging bite on the back of the upper part of my left arm. I groaned, for I knew on the instant the cause. The Cobra had found me. And lo! out from the thin mull sleeve of my gown crept the horrible snake; and before we could recover presence of mind, it had glided out of the half-open doorway, and disappeared, no one knew whither. We heard very plainly, however, the clear, treble, hautboy note of its voice, which sounded to me like the exultant cry of a fiend. This strange sound passed through the building as a swift wind, then died away, with a faint wail, into utter stillness.

"Death seemed inevitable. I felt the bite burning and aching intensely. I plucked off my sleeve, and there upon my arm was a yellow spot as large as a pea, with skin and flesh bitten out, and the hollow filled with the angry poison of the serpent. I was taken to the infirmary of the establishment. Two members of the community said I must have a place two inches square cut out, and a hot iron applied; this must be done immediately, otherwise I had only thirty minutes to live.

"I was stretched on a bed; and watched them as they sharpened their instruments for the excision, and heated the iron for searing. The serpent poison was beginning to act upon me; this, added to the dread of the approaching suffering, overpowered me, and I fainted.

"When I recovered my senses, I learned that the operation had been performed successfully, the poison completely extracted, and I was safe; for they told me that some days had elapsed during my insensibility.

"Soon after, I awakened, trembling from head to foot.

I was unable to arise, and was ill for some days; indeed many weeks passed before I recovered my usual health and elasticity; and, strange to say, for a long while after I felt a pain in my left arm, and a sensitiveness to the touch in the spot where the dream-bite had been, though. there was no mark or bruise perceptible.

"My physician, to whom I told my dream, said my whole nervous system was as much prostrated as though I had really suffered the terrible serpent bite, excision, and cauterization which I had imagined with such vivid power in my dream. So, Venitia, my rubies did not save me from that dream trouble, you see.”

"Ah," answered the girl, with a pretty look of half superstition, half playfulness, "but in your ring the rubies surround the ill-omened opal, that unlucky gem that brings the wearer disappointment and fallacious hope." And thus closed our midnight talk.

HUMAN FAME.

ALKING of the Toledo crowd, "what a sight it is to be sure," as Mrs. Folham says. Every clear morning we drive through it, getting out

of the carriage occasionally to hunt up old buildings, or spend an hour or two looking at the wonderful things contained in the Museo Borbonico. The bronzes, and marbles, and pictures, and precious relics of "those palimpsests of Nature," as Heine so finely called Herculaneum and Pompeii," where the original old stone text is brought out," these are all safely deposited in the fine halls of this building, and displayed there with striking effect.

But most often we go and study in the churches; for study indeed it is, to hunt up the old tombs and monumental marbles contained in them, and link correctly together the double and treble chain of the artist who carved the story, of the man who lived it, and the full period of history which rounded it into a whole.

Persons who visit Naples are hardly aware of the vast amount of sepulchral wealth contained in her churches. They are lined and floored and almost roofed with tombs, sarcophagi, statues, bas-reliefs, and stone chests, covered with fine old monumental, sculpture, the works of the artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. We

go again and again to certain favorite ones. Santa Chiara, for example, is an unexplored mine of curious beauty and wealth. The old pulpit and bas-reliefs overhanging the western entrance are fine leaves, as it were, in the history of Middle-Age sculpture, for they are the works of the elder Masuccio, who died on the threshold of the fourteenth century (1308).

By means of ladders and glasses we examined both of these old relics. The bas-reliefs contain the whole of the beautiful legend of that learned and saintly woman, St. Catharine of Alexandria, she whose history has inspired so many great artists. The daughter of a king, and renowned for her beauty, her learning, and her pride, when a mighty prince asked her in marriage, she refused him, saying she would take no one as her husband unless as noble, as rich, and as wise as herself.

Some time after, her mother, the queen, sent her to see a holy hermit, who, having promised her a spouse that should be not only her equal, but far exceeding her in rank and all beauty of mind and body, then showed her a tablet on which was traced an image of the Mother of God, holding her Son in her arms. The princess returned home, and dreamed that the figures she had seen on the tablet came to her, as if alive; and when she went to receive the lovely Child, he turned from her, saying she was not beautiful enough.

Through her mother's prayers, and the intercession of the hermit, she was secretly converted to Christianity; then again she had a vision, and in it Christ's Mother came to her with her Holy Infant, who held a ring in his little hand, and the royal maiden was wedded to him with that ring, which the Child put on her finger.

All the principal passages in her life are told with