--nothing can save him. He'll be a dead man in ten
minutes. Here with the picture, Dame Caterina; it belongs to me--all I
shall get for my services! Here with the picture, I tell you."

But when Dame Caterina opened the box, and Doctor Splendiano
Accoramboni saw the old cloaks and the burst and tattered boots and
shoes which it contained, his eyes rolled in his head like fire wheels,
he gnashed his teeth, stamped with his feet, devoted Salvator, the
widow, and all the inmates of the house, to the demons of hell, and
bolted out of the door as if discharged from a cannon.

When the paroxysm of excitement was over, Salvator again fell into a
deathlike condition, and Dame Caterina thought his last hour was
certainly come. So she ran as quickly as she could to the convent, and
brought Father Bonifazio to administer the sacraments to the dying man.
When Father Bonifazio came, he looked at the patient, said he very well
knew the peculiar signs which death imprints upon the face of one whom
he is going to carry off; but there was nothing of the sort to be seen
on the face of the unconscious Salvator in his faint, and that help was
still possible, and he himself would procure or bestow; only Doctor
Splendiano Accoramboni, with his Greek names and diabolical phials,
must never cross the doorstep again. The good father set to work, and
we shall find that he kept his word.

Salvator came to his senses, and it seemed to him that he was lying in
a delightful, sweet-smelling arbour, for green branches and leaves were
stretching over him. He felt a delightful salutary warmth of life
permeating him, only, apparently, his left arm was fettered.

"Where am I?" he cried, in a faint voice. Then a young man of handsome
appearance, whom he had not observed before, though he was standing by
his bed, fell down on his knees, seized Salvator's right hand, bathing
it in tears, and cried over and over again, "Oh, my beloved Signor, my
grand master! all is well now! You are saved; you will recover!"

"Well," began Salvator, "but tell me----"

The young man interrupted him, begging him not to talk in his weak
condition, and promising to tell him all that had been happening. "You
must know, my dear and great master, that you must have been
exceedingly ill when you arrived in Naples here; but your condition was
not probably very dangerous, and moderate measures, considering the
strength of your constitution, would doubtless have set you on your
l