370 ARTADNE FLORENTINA. 



dressed in black, standing at the corner of the stage watching 

 them, having a likeness in her face to one of my own dead 

 friends ; and I knew somehow that she was not that friend, 

 but a spirit ; and she made me understand, without speaking, 

 that I was to watch, for the play would turn out other than 

 the priests expected. And I waited ; and when the scene 

 came on the clouds became real clouds, and the fiends real 

 fiends, agitating them in slow quivering, wild and terrible, 

 over the heads of the people and priests. I recollected dis- 

 tinctly, however, when I woke, only the figure of the black 

 woman mocking the people, and of one priest in an agony of 

 terror, with the sweat pouring from his brow, but violently 

 scolding one of the stage servants for having failed in some 

 ceremony, the omission of which, he thought, had given the 

 devils their power. 



The third dream was the most interesting and personal. 

 Some one came to me to ask me to help in the deliverance of 

 a company of Italian prisoners who were to be ransomed for 

 money. I said I had no money. They answered, Yes, I had 

 some that belonged to me as a brother of St. Francis, if I 

 would give it up. I said I did not know even that I was a 

 brother of St. Francis ; but I thought to myself, that perhaps 

 the Franciscans of Fesole, whom I had helped to make hay in 

 their fields in 1845, had adopted me for one ; only I didn't 

 see how the consequence of that would be my having any 

 money. However, I said they were welcome to whatever I 

 had ; and then I heard the voice of an Italian woman singing ; 

 and I have never heard such divine singing before nor since ; 

 the sounds absolutely strong and real, and the melody alto- 

 gether lovely. If I could have written it ! But I could not 

 even remember it when I woke, only how beautiful it was. 



34. Now these three dreams have, every one of them, been 

 of much use to me since ; or so far as they have failed to be 

 useful, it has been my own fault, and not theirs ; but the 

 chief use of them at the time was to give me courage and con- 

 fidence in myself, both in bodily distress, of which I had still 

 not a little to bear ; and worse, much mental anxiety about 

 matters supremely interesting to me, which were turning out 



