ss,
while they deaden thought as best they can with those melancholy devices
that are familiar to the sleepless.

The hunchback rested now, but was glad to lie awake, though he was well
aware that he deserved no especial credit for watching while his young
master slept soundly by his side. But he did not try to cheat time by
fancying that he was counting a flock of sheep that crowded through a
narrow gate into a field, or by saying the alphabet backwards, or by
repeating all the prayers he knew, which were many, for he was a
religiously inclined person, nor did he laboriously reckon how many
Apostolic florins there were in seventeen hundred and sixty-three and a
half Venetian ducats. On the contrary, he concentrated his mind to the
best of his ability on a problem which it seemed to him of the very
highest importance to solve at once; for it involved nothing less than
the salvation of Alessandro Stradella's soul.

Now Cucurullo, as I have said, was religiously inclined. He was not
devout in the same sense as the two cut-throats who lighted candles
before the image of Saint Francis for the success of their murderous
enterprise, and paid beforehand for masses to be said for the soul of
the man they were going to kill. He would not have denied that this was
a form of piety too, if any one had asked him his opinion. Everything,
he would have argued, was relative; and if you were going to stab a man
in the back, it was more moral to make an effort to save his soul than
to wish to destroy it with his body. He would have admitted this, for he
was charitable, even to such people as professional murderers. But his
own religion was quite of another sort; he was devotedly attached to his
master, he was deeply concerned for the latter's future welfare, and it
looked just now as if Stradella's chances of salvation would be slender
if any accident carried him off suddenly. Moreover, such an accident
might occur at any moment, for, like Stradella himself, he anticipated
that Pignaver would seek a speedy revenge.

Like the early Christians he was a pessimist about this world and an
optimist about the next; for that is usually the state of mind of those
who labour under any material or bodily disability, from slavery, which
is the worst, to blindness or deformity.

As a pessimist, therefore, Cucurullo thought that his master, Ortensia,
Pina, and himself had a most excellent chance of having their throats
cut within twenty-four hours