"I am going for a little walk," he told her. "Your father has a visitor. Perhaps it were not uncivil to call him half a visitor, he is so small. He came in without knocking."

The girl hastily crossed herself. "A deformed old man, sigorino?” she asked in a low voice, with fear in her eyes.

"Precisely. But what is the matter?" Maria Bassano was briefly convulsed like her father. While she shook, her bosom swelled and swelled; and then, with a sob of breath, she rushed into the house.

Douglas would have followed her, but she waved him back.

"Go, caro signore!" she whispered, with the fear still spoiling her beauty. "Go away!" She snatched at her rosary, and he left her clinging to the beads and rapidly parting them, with lips that seemed to be struggling dumbly in an effort to pray.

But yet another slight sensation was in store for Douglas this day.

Ravelling at the meaning of these extraordinary agitations in Bassano and his daughter, he marched down the street towards the centre of the city, and was met by Marco Merano in his workaday blue blouse. He did not recognize him until the man lifted his cap, stopped, and spoke.

"You have your thoughts, signore, any one can see," he said jocosely.

"Oh, it's you!" said Douglas.

"Yes,

I have my thoughts, as you say." He would have gone on; but the other's question, "Is my little girl in the house, signore?" checked him.

"Yes," he said. "But-perhaps you will not be welcome to her at this moment. It is a guess of mine. There is a visitor, a small, stunted man with ears like an elephant's, who has upset her. He is with her father; but she--"

He got thus far before he realized the intensity of the change in the young

greengrocer's countenance. Marco was gritting his white teeth like a dog, and there was a passionate beetling of those marked eyebrows of his.

"What is it now?" Douglas asked.

"A man so high, with a white beard?” retorted Marco.

"A man just so high, with a white or gray beard."

"Then," said Marco, "may the Evil One seize him!" He whisked to the rightabout. "I go your way now, signore," he added. "She will not speak to me for days, I think. She will weep and go to church more than ever, and I shall be to her as if I were not a live man. It has been so before. This Bolla-he has a power over her father which it torments her to see. The last time was when the poor Banti met with her end. She was then so ill, signore, thatBut why talk of it, especially when she would not forgive me if she could hear me? Do not tell her that you have seen me, signore. She has her moods, like other girls. It is nothing worse than that." But Douglas's mind was now keenly on the alert.

"La Bella Banti, you say?" he asked. "She was of this street, was she not?" The young greengrocer pointed over his shoulder.

"Yes," he said. "That is where she lived with her mother as a young girl. She always retained an affection for the neighborhood. When she wore diamonds like a princess and drove in her own carriage, it was still to Bassano that her boots and little shoes came to be repaired. From sympathy with the friends of her youth, signore.”

"Yes?" said Douglas, disguising his avidity. "And that other, Andrea Guisano? He also lived here?"

"That is true, signore; and"-Marco laughed rather bitterly, as if he resented the inclination at such a time-"it was the same with him, signore, as touching his boots. Bassano worked for him as

for the poor Banti. Corpo santo! that is what disquiets me. After the Guisano tragedy I jested with Maria in saying that it was a fatality for her father to mend a man's boots, and she was furious with me. It will be the same again unless I hold my tongue. Name of a she-dog! And that ugly little Bolla here as before! But I turn off by this street. To the pleasure of seeing you again, signorino!”

"One moment," said Douglas. "This Bolla, you call him? Do you tell me he is, as it were, a coincidence with these mishaps?"

"It is

"I do not know, signore," replied the young greengrocer, with the appearance of suspicion now in his eyes. not to be talked about. A rivedere!" He strode across the road. Douglas turned to the window of a little wineshop and understood why his heart beat so fast. He read the cardboard slips in the window about the good red wine at twenty, thirty, and forty centesimi the litre, and told himself that at last he had a clue to the mystery of the exploded five. He could see not at all whither the clue positively pointed. He knew only that a voice had cried joyfully within him, and that his whole brain approved the cause for such exultation. For many minutes he gazed absorbedly at these intimations about cheap red wine. The wine-vendor himself showed a head behind them without disturbing him. Even when the man hung up a new card, announcing excellent white wine of Asti at fifty centesimi the litre, side by side with the others, Douglas paid heed neither to it nor the cunning merchant's face.

He was groping all the time, like a an in the dark who knows for a truth that there is something to be found. What should he do? And then he decided that he would take the most obvious of courses. He would wait and follow this deformed imp of a Bolla.

From the wine-shop window he commanded a view of the cobbler's door at the end of the street. He watched zealously for five more minutes, with his back to the advertisements of the good and excellent wine; zealously, yet with dissimulation, smoking and reading to some extent at the same time.

Then, whom should he see come round the corner from the Piazza d'Armi but the well-groomed Count Enzio! He just obtained a glimpse of the gentleman's slender form, pinched at the waist, and of the red flower in his button-hole. The next moment the man had entered the house without knocking. To be sure, the door was generally thus open to the turn of a handle; but Douglas had learnt that the conventional thing to do was to knock before entering.

Leaving the wine-shop, Douglas returned slowly to his lodging. He had some notion that a general embroilment might ensue in that modest house; and if so, it were perchance some advan tage to him to take a hand in it.

Nor were his intuitions altogether at fault here also. He found the door open, and the Count, with an inflamed face, on the point of passing towards the pavement. Farther inside Was Maria, also red-faced and excited: though with tears on her cheeks.

The separation between them was immediate when Douglas appeared. With a sweep of his hat, the elaborateness of which hinted at irony, Masuccio stepped from the house, and, after an unfriendly gaze at Douglas, vanished round the corner. The girl rushed from the hall into the little shop to the right; and there, when he presumed to follow her, Douglas found her almost doubled on a chair, rocking herself and shedding abundant tears.

"My dear child," he said, "what is it all about? What has happened to distress you?"

She did not reply, but wept on. Upon the counter was a neat parcel.

tied with white tape, evidently, from its shape, containing a boot.

"Tell me the trouble, little one," Douglas urged, as he looked at the snowy parting in the girl's black hair. "Has he-that fellow-insulted you?"

She glanced up then with an expression in her tear-charged blue eyes for which a romantic artist might have paid a good price.

"Is the door shut, signorino?" she whispered.

He shut it softly.

"We are alone," he said.

Then Maria Bassano burst forth. "I wish he was dead, signorino," she cried. "And I wish further that I was in Paradise with my dearest mother. This wicked earth! But no-I will not do it. I will be true to my Marco." "The Count" suggested Douglas. "Yes, signorino," she exclaimed, responsive to his prompting. "He threatens that unless I consent to sacrifice myself to him to-morrow he will make a scandal of me. He is so enamored. I did not think he had such a heart of fire. I do not love him-no; but I have taken his presents, many of them, and he has twice kissed my lips, and I am a very unfortunate young woman to have let him go so far. He desires to carry me away to his country house by Bologna. Do I say desires? He insists. And he tells me that, if, when he comes for his miserable boot in the morning-there, behold it by your hand!-if I am still obstinate he will find out my poor Marco, and-andAh! but who shall say what will then come to us all? They will perhaps fight, and I at least shall be disgraced. Signorino, I hate him worse, I think, than that other. What a house is this!"

"Poor little girl!" murmured Douglas, stroking the coarse black hair of her head by the broad parting. "But, you know, I told you before--" She shook off his hand.

"That is not all, caro signore," she almost screamed, with a fresh flood of tears, and the terror as before staring through the tears. "There was my poor father lying like one dead on the floor upstairs. He, that accursed other, found him so. I would not help him to his senses at first, when I saw for what purpose that other had come. But it is enough, signorino! I must no talk. This is no house for so gracious and kind-hearted a stranger as you, signorino. Would to heaven my poor father could escape from the city! That is what I have begged and begged. We are of Parma ourselves. There are our blood-relatives, and there we might live happy and peaceful lives, with perhaps Marco, if God willed-if-if things were otherwise. It is because of a weakness of mind in my poor father. But come, I must be courageous and wipe my eyes, signore."

She stood up and jerked her thick black plait behind her, tried to smile, and used her handkerchief to her face. Douglas himself was more perturbed now than she seemed.

"That is right. Courage! courage!" he said at a venture. "But you talk of the man Bolla, do you not-him with the ears?"

The girl's hands clenched into a fist by the side of the Count's parcel, and her full rosy lips tightened grimly. She drew breath before she replied.

"No, signore, I talk not of him. And, excuse me, but it is the hour when Marco comes sometimes." She force another smile; without much difficulty either, thanks to her blessed mercurial temperament. "Marco will not like it if he finds you here with me-thus."

"He will not come to-day," said Douglas thoughtlessly. "He was in the street just now when that otherBut for charity's sake don't glare at me like that!"

The girl's temper had taken yet another turn. No turkey-cock in Doug

We are living in the midst of a great movement which seems destined to exercise a revolutionary influence on human life. This movement is here fantastic and extravagant, there superstitious and even disgusting, and there, again, scientific, progressive, and healthy. Speaking summarily, it may be said to be a revolt against the materialistic trend which till recent years dominated medical science, a revolt brought about by a more vivid realization of the power of mind over bodily states. It is this fact which lies at the root of "Christian Science," "Mind Cure," "Faith Cure," "Metaphysical Healing," and many other quasi-philosophical, quasi-religious systems of Transatlantic origin. The point to be emphasized is that these more or less elaborate doctrines, partly theological, partly psychological, ought to be kept distinct from the fundamental fact to which they seek to give expression,-the fact, namely, that mind can, and does, affect the fortunes of the body, and that mental influence can be utilized in the scientific treatment of disease. While it is true that "Christian Science," to take for illustration the most popular of these cults, rests upon a misinterpretation of matter, a kind of ill-understood Berkeleyism, teaches the unreal

ity of sin and sickness, and repudiates academic medicine as an immense illusion, yet the valuable truth which lies behind these irrational notions deserves our recognition, and ought to receive practical application at our hands.

The wise man will not be frightened away from any beneficent principle by the bizarre and grotesque shapes with which credulity may have clothed it. Here, indeed, we may recall the Aristotelian maxim, and say that the truth lies midway between two extremes,between a hard, hide-bound materialism, and an airy, ungrounded, unreasoned spiritualism. One of the basic ideas of modern psychology is the mutual influence of mind and body springing out of their profound unity. Any doctrine that contradicts this scientific postulate must be deemed outside the boundaries of right reason. As to the

influence of the body upon the mind there is no room for doubt. The witness of everyday life is reinforced by the detailed tests of the psychological laboratory. Mental disease can be traced to brain degeneration; physical injuries create psychical discomfort; mental processes are deeply affected by drugs, such as alcohol, opium, cocaine, morphine, and many others. But it is

equally true that mental states affect bodily processes. The famous saying of Huxley that consciousness has no more to do with physical conditions than has a steam whistle with the driving of a locomotive sounds like an absurdity in the light of recent investigations. We are now informed that the emotion of fear may produce paralysis, jaundice, sudden decay of teeth, erysipelas, eczema, and even death. "The fact is," says Professor James, the American psychologist, "that there is no sort of consciousness whatever, be it sensation, feeling, or idea which does not directly and of itself tend to discharge into some motor effect. The motor effect need not always be an outward stroke of behavior. be only an alteration of the heart-beats or breathing, or a modification of the distribution of the blood, such as blushing or turning pale; or else a secretion of tears or what not. But, in any case, it is there in some shape when any consciousness is there; and a belief as fundamental as any in modern psychology is the belief at last attained that conscious processes of any sort must pass over into motion, open or concealed."

It may

Now if one could pierce through the adverse physical conditions of a victim of neurasthenia, or "nerve prostration," to the mind within, and by bright and optimistic suggestions awaken the idea of health, mental and spiritual poise, one would have set the sufferer on the road to recovery. Every clergyman is brought into contact with people who are nervous, fretful, foreboding. For them each day seems to portend disaster; at night visionary phantoms murder sleep. These are the miserable victims of insomnia, hypochondria, egotism, religious melancholy, remorse, and so forth. The family physician in the presence of such cases is tempted to echo the words of his famous professional brother: "This

LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXV. 1828

disease is beyond my practice. more needs she the divine than the physician." What is really needed is an alliance between the clergyman and the doctor. The Church, in imitation of her Founder, ought to take compassion on these unhappy people, and come to their aid with all the liberating and recreating powers of genuine religion, combined with the technical skill of the most advanced medical science of our time. And the clearer understanding of the great law of suggestion is no mean help in this much-needed work. By suggestion as here used is not meant anything of a compulsory character such as is characteristic of hypnotism, but rather the holding before the mind of the afflicted person ideals of health and poise until they become his own and gain outward physical expression.

Every human being is more or less open to suggestion; indeed, a recent writer proposes to define man as "a suggestible animal." And the records of suggestive therapeutics as set forth in the pages of Professor Dubois's recently translated "Psychic Treatment of Nervous Diseases" (Funk and Wagnalls) prove that physical functions, as well as deeply rooted habits and desires, can be altered permanently by suggestion.

Probably the most momentous discovery in mental science for a century is that of the part played by the "subconscious" in our experience. Consciousness is the wonderful candle of the Lord, that reveals all marvels and makes all that we call knowledge. But the dominant light of consciousness is not all. Around the little flame lie great fruitful fields of personality wrapped in darkness. and in God's economy the darkness is as necessary as the light. It has been compared to an iceberg floating on the sea,-only a relatively small portion rises above the water and is visible, but this small