nt stopped, bit a piece
for himself out of the tart, and gravely handed the rest to the monkey.
"My poor little man!" he said, with grotesque tenderness, "you look
hungry. In the sacred name of humanity, I offer you some lunch!" The
organ-grinder piteously put in his claim to a penny from the benevolent
stranger. The Count shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and passed
on.

We reached the streets and the better class of shops between the New
Road and Oxford Street. The Count stopped again and entered a small
optician's shop, with an inscription in the window announcing that
repairs were neatly executed inside. He came out again with an
opera-glass in his hand, walked a few paces on, and stopped to look at
a bill of the opera placed outside a music-seller's shop. He read the
bill attentively, considered a moment, and then hailed an empty cab as
it passed him. "Opera Box-office," he said to the man, and was driven
away.

I crossed the road, and looked at the bill in my turn. The performance
announced was Lucrezia Borgia, and it was to take place that evening.
The opera-glass in the Count's hand, his careful reading of the bill,
and his direction to the cabman, all suggested that he proposed making
one of the audience. I had the means of getting an admission for
myself and a friend to the pit by applying to one of the scene-painters
attached to the theatre, with whom I had been well acquainted in past
times. There was a chance at least that the Count might be easily
visible among the audience to me and to any one with me, and in this
case I had the means of ascertaining whether Pesca knew his countryman
or not that very night.

This consideration at once decided the disposal of my evening. I
procured the tickets, leaving a note at the Professor's lodgings on the
way. At a quarter to eight I called to take him with me to the
theatre. My little friend was in a state of the highest excitement,
with a festive flower in his button-hole, and the largest opera-glass I
ever saw hugged up under his arm.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"Right-all-right," said Pesca.

We started for the theatre.

V

The last notes of the introduction to the opera were being played, and
the seats in the pit were all filled, when Pesca and I reached the
theatre.

There was plenty of room, however, in the passage that ran round the
pit--precisely the position best calculated to answer the purpose for
which I was attending th