What next, Bran?
Ah! Could one believe the transformation?
Why, this is the very trim villa which I passed yesterday morning, with the garden-chairs standing among the flower-beds, just as the young ladies had left them, and the peacocks and silver pheasants running about, wondering why their pretty mistresses did not come to feed them.

And here is a trampled mass of wreck and corruption for the girls to find, when they venture back from Rome, and complain how horrible war is for breaking down all their shrubs, and how cruel soldiers must be to kill and cook all their poor dear tame turtle-doves! Why not?
Why should they lament over other things--which they can just as little mend--and which perhaps need no more mending?
Ah! there lies a gallant fellow underneath that fruit-tree!' Raphael walked up to a ring of dead, in the midst of which lay, half-sitting against the trunk of the tree, a tall and noble officer in the first bloom of manhood.

His casque and armour, gorgeously inlaid with gold, were hewn and battered by a hundred blows; his shield was cloven through and through; his sword broken in the stiffened hand which grasped it still.

Cut off from his troop, he had made his last stand beneath the tree, knee-deep in the gay summer flowers, and there he lay, bestrewn, as if by some mockery--or pity--of mother nature, with faded roses, and golden fruit, shaken from off the boughs in that last deadly struggle.

Raphael stood and watched him with a sad sneer.
'Well!--you have sold your fancied personality dear! How many dead men ?....