administered the last sacraments to the dying. Foremost among
them in zeal and devotion was Gian Pietro Caraffa, afterwards
Pope Paul the Fourth. In the convent of the Theatines at Venice,
under the eye of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode,
tended the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved
himself almost to death, and often sallied into the streets,
mounted on stones, and, waving his hat to invite the passers-by,
began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and
Tuscan. The Theatines were among the most zealous and rigid of
men; but to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed
lax, and their movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally
passionate and imaginative, had passed through a training which
had given to all its peculiarities a morbid intensity and energy.
In his early life he had been the very prototype of the hero of
Cervantes. The single study of the young Hidalgo had been
chivalrous romance; and his existence had been one gorgeous day-
dream of princesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had chosen a
Dulcinea, "no countess, no duchess,"--these are his own words,--
"but one of far higher station"; and he flattered himself with
the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and
the jewelled turbans of Asiatic kings. In the midst of these
visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound
stretched him on a bed of sickness. His constitution was
shattered and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of
strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no longer
for him. He could no longer hope to strike down gigantic soldans,
or to find favour in the sight of beautiful women. A new vision
then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with his old delusions
in a manner which to most Englishmen must seem singular, but
which those who know how close was the union between religion and