was, and when he had got there remembered that still he
did not know the name of Moufflou's owner; but the people of the hotel
knew him as Rosina Calabucci's son, and guessed what he wanted, and said
the gentleman who had lost the poodle was within, up-stairs, and they
would tell him.

Tasso waited some half-hour with his heart beating sorely against the
packet of hundred-franc notes. At last he was beckoned up-stairs, and
there he saw a foreigner with a mild fair face, and a very lovely lady,
and a delicate child who was lying on a couch. "Moufflou! Where is
Moufflou?" cried the little child, impatiently, as he saw the youth
enter.

Tasso took his hat off, and stood in the door-way an embrowned, healthy,
not ungraceful figure, in his working-clothes of rough blue stuff.

"If you please, most illustrious," he stammered, "poor Moufflou has come
home."

The child gave a cry of delight; the gentleman and lady one of wonder.
Come home! All the way from Rome!

"Yes, he has, most illustrious," said Tasso, gaining courage and
eloquence; "and now I want to beg something of you. We are poor, and I
drew a bad number, and it was for that my mother sold Moufflou. For
myself, I did not know anything of it; but she thought she would buy my
substitute, and of course she could; but Moufflou is come home, and my
little brother Lolo, the little boy your most illustrious first saw
playing with the poodle, fell ill of the grief of losing Moufflou, and
for a month has lain saying nothing sensible, but only calling for the
dog, and my old grandfather died of worrying himself mad over the
lottery numbers, and Lolo was so near dying that the Blessed Host had
been brought, and the holy oil had been put on him, when all at once
there rushes in Moufflou, skin and bone, and covered with mud, and at
the sight of him Lolo comes back to his senses, and that is now ten days
ago, and though Lolo is still as weak as a new-born thing, he is always
sensible, and takes what we give him to eat, and lies always looking at
Moufflou, and smiling, and saying, 'Moufflou! Moufflou!' and, most
illustrious, I know well you have bought the dog, and the law is with
you, and by the law you claim it, but I thought perhaps, as Lolo loves
him so, you would let us keep the dog, and would take back the thousand
francs, and myself I will go and be a soldier, and heaven will take care
of them all somehow."

Then Tasso, having said all this in one breathless, monotono