estate of Felix was wasted by extravagance, his merchandize failed him by neglect, and his effects were seized by the merciless hands of creditors. He applied himself for support to the nobles and great men whom he had feasted and made presents to, but his voice was as the voice of a stranger, and they remembered not his face. The friends whom he had neglected derided him in their turn, his wife also insulted him, and turned her back upon him and fled. Yet was his heart so bewitched with her sorceries, that he pursued her with entreaties, until, by her haste to abandon him, her mask fell off, and discovered to him a face as withered and deformed, as before it had appeared youthful and engaging. What became of him afterwards tradition does not relate with certainty. It is believed that he fled into Egypt, and lived precariously on the scanty benevolence of a few friends, who had not totally deserted him, and that he died in a short time, wretched and an exile. Let us now return to Uranio, who, as we have already observed, had been driven out of doors by his brother Felix. Adversity, though hateful to his heart, and a spectre to his eyes, was the constant attendant upon his steps: and to aggravate his sorrow, he received certain intelligence that his richest vessel was taken by a Sardinian pirate, that another was lost upon the Lybian Syrtes, and, to complete all, that the banker, with whom the greatest part of his ready money was entrusted, had deserted his creditors and retired into Sicily. Collecting therefore the small remains of his fortune, he bid adieu to Tyre, and, led by Adversity through unfrequented roads and forests overgrown with thickets, he came at last to a small village at the foot of a mountain. Here they took up their abode for some time; and Adversity, in return for all the anxiety he had suffered, softening the se |