would find a lodging with them now suited to
his reduced circumstances.

He knocked familiarly at the door, and called his name in at it time
after time. At last he heard the old woman rousing herself with
difficulty from sleep. She came, dragging along her slippers, to the
window, scolding violently at the scoundrel who was disturbing her in
the middle of the night--her house not being an inn, &c. Then it took a
deal of up and down talking ere she recognised her former lodger by his
voice; and on Salvator's complaining that he had been obliged to flee
from Naples and could find no roof to cover him in Rome, she cried out,
"Ah! Christ and all the saints! Is it you, Signor Salvator? Your room
upstairs, looking upon the courtyard, is empty still, and the old
fig-tree has stretched its leaves and branches right into the window,
so that you can sit and work as if you were in a beautiful cool arbour.
Ah! how delighted my girls will be that you are here again, Signor
Salvator. But I must tell you Margerita has grown a big girl, and a
very _pretty_ girl--it won't do to take her on your knee now! Your cat,
only fancy, died three months ago--a fish bone stuck in its throat.
Aye, aye, poor thing! the grave is the common lot. And what do you
think? Our fat neighbour woman--she whom you so often laughed at and
drew the funny caricatures of--she has gone and got married to that
young lad, Signor Luigi. Well, well! _Nozze e magistrati sono da dio
destinati!_ Marriages are made in heaven, they say."

"But, Signora Caterina," interrupted Salvator, "I implore you by all
the saints let me in to begin with, and then tell all about your
fig-tree, your daughters, the kitten, and the fat woman. I am dying of
cold and weariness."

"Now, just see how impatient he is!" cried the old woman. "_Chi va
piano va sano; chi va presto muore lesto._ The more haste the less
speed, is what I always say. But you're tired, you're shivering; so
quick with the key, quick with the key."

Before getting hold of the key, however, she had to awaken her
daughters, and then slowly, slowly strike a light. Ultimately she
opened the door to the exhausted Salvator; but as soon as he crossed
the threshold he fell down like a dead man, overcome by exhaustion and
illness. Fortunately the widow's son, who lived at Tivoli, happened to
have just come home, and he was at once turned out of his bed, which he
willingly gave up to this sick family friend.

The old lady had