iption of
them, even down to the minutest details.

"Poor Marianna," said Salvator, "leads a sad life of it with the crazy
old fellow. There he sits sighing and ogling the whole day long, and,
what is worse still, in order to soften her heart towards him, he sings
her all and sundry love ditties that he has ever composed or intends to
compose. At the same time he is so monstrously jealous that he will not
even permit the poor young girl to have the usual female attendance,
for fear of intrigues and amours, which the maid might be induced to
engage in. Instead, a hideous little apparition with hollow eyes and
pale flabby cheeks appears every morning and evening to perform for
sweet Marianna the services of a tiring-maid. And this little
apparition is nobody else but that tiny Tomb Thumb of a Pitichinaccio,
who has to don female attire. Capuzzi, whenever he leaves home,
carefully locks and bolts every door; besides which there is always a
confounded fellow keeping watch below, who was formerly a bravo, and
then a gendarme, and now lives under Capuzzi's rooms. It seems,
therefore, a matter almost impossible to effect an entrance into his
house, but nevertheless I promise you, Antonio, that this very night
you shall be in Capuzzi's own room and shall see your Marianna, though
this time it will only be in Capuzzi's presence."

"What do you say?" cried Antonio, quite excited; "what do you say? We
shall manage it to-night? I thought it was impossible."

"There, there," continued Salvator, "keep still, Antonio, and let us
quietly consider how we may with safety carry out the plan which I have
conceived. But in the first place I must tell you that I have already
scraped an acquaintance with Signor Pasquale Capuzzi without knowing
it. That wretched spinet, which stands in the comer there, belongs to
the old fellow, and he wants me to pay him the preposterous sum of ten
ducats[3.1] for it. When I was convalescent I longed for some music,
which always comforts me and does me a deal of good, so I begged my
landlady to get me some such an instrument as that Dame Caterina soon
ascertained that there was an old gentleman living in the Via Ripetta
who had a fine spinet to sell I got the instrument brought here. I did
not trouble myself either about the price or about the owner. It was
only yesterday evening that I learned quite by chance that the
gentleman who intended to cheat me with this rickety old thing was
Signor Pasquale Capuz