The moon arose!

Reposing on the porch of an ancient mansion,—which, deserted and falling to ruins, was pitched on the brow of a dizzy steep;—a traveller, who had journeyed far and long, looked forth upon the night, through an opening in the trees crowning the verge of the cliff, and, with a soul filled with silent awe, beheld this scene of the grandeur of nature, combined with the glories of art, and the stern memories of a long past age.

A lovely valley lay sleeping in the moonbeams: ancient towers, Gothic temples, domes of religion, palaces of pleasure, rose clearly in the air, from amid gardens gay with flowers, or forests heavy with foliage, while around the scene of slumbering grandeur, swept the mighty Apennines, lifting their blue peaks into the universe of azure that arched above, silvered and tinted and mellowed by the midnight moon.

A stream of tremulous silver wandered brightly through the valley, like a banner waving along the blackness of night. The domes of an ancient city, baptized by the strains of the Minstrel, and consecrated by the words of the Romancer, were seen looming over the forest trees, from the dim distance of the vale.

The moon arose!

There was softness, and beauty, and power, written on the wide sweep of that boundless sky, with its horizon of blue mountains; there was solemn silence resting on the night, and the angels of God might look down upon the scene, and weep to think that a land so like heaven in its gorgeousness of beauty, should be stamped with the footsteps of crimes too mighty for belief, wrongs too dark for the page of history, woes steeped in the very bitterness of death.

It was the valley of the Arno, and the traveler gazed from the height upon the distant City of Florence, surnamed the “Fair.”

Arising in the calm moonbeams from the very centre of the valley, the gray towers of a ruined castle broke abruptly into the dark azure of night, looming from the distance like stern monuments of a past age, lifting to heaven their testimony of the glory and the gloom of the Gothic Era.

It was the Castle of Albarone, the home of a mighty race who flourished in long past centuries. Within the walls of the lonely castle,—lonely because in ruins,—rising from the bosom of the Arno, and along the shores of a mountain lake, not many leagues away, the tragedy of the race of Albarone found its theatre of action, with vast multitudes of men looking on, spectators or actors in its scene of varied and contrasted horror.

And as the traveller, wearied with his day’s journey, athirst from fatigue and toil, uprose from his resting-place, and looked yet once more upon the night, ere he hastened on his path to the Fair City of Florence, his eye was again met by the stern vision of the castle towering in ruins, and over his soul came a feeling of awe and horror, as he mused upon the crimes and mysteries of the House of Albarone, while the night around him grew more still, and the sky above more shadowy in its beauty.

And as he mused, a dark cloud covered the face of the moon, hovering like a vast bird, with wings of night, and form of omen, right above the ruined towers of Albarone. A moment passed, the sky was again all glory and light, while still—

The moon arose!