,
beat his breast, and began to walk up and down the cell.

"Send him in, hermit, send him in! Forty ducats if he has any news, ten
ducats in any case for bringing my thoughts from Jews on earth to
Ippolita in Paradise. Despatch, despatch, send me the goatherd."

The pale apparition of a fair-haired boy, timid in rags, cloaked in
rusty black, with bandaged legs, and his old felt hat crushed against
his breast, stood in the doorway.

"Oh, boy!" cried Alessandro, gesticulating with one hand, "may you be my
Hermes, my swiftfoot messenger. Tell me what you know of the divine
Ippolita."

"I know where she is, Signor Sotto-Prefetto," says Silvestro huskily.

"Tell me, by Venus and all her doves!"

For answer the blushing boy looked appealingly at Alessandro, with eyes
so deeply, limpidly, searchingly blue, with lips so tenderly parted,
with a smile fluttering so timidly, and limbs so drooping under their
disguise, yet so quickly transformed from frightened lad's to bashful
beauty's, that--

"Saints of the Heavenly Court--ah, God of Love!" cried Alessandro; and
the Sub-Prefect fell upon his knees before the goatherd.

Later you might have seen that same goatherd enthroned in the hermit's
armchair, his hands locked in his lap, his legs modestly disposed, his
head gracefully bowed, a blush on his burnt cheeks, his long lashes
casting a shade, his breath coming and going with a pretty haste--and
at his feet a splendid gentleman, booted and cuirassed, who poured out
voluble assurances of eternal respect, of love undying, of the sovranty
of Venus Urania, and the communion of beautiful minds.

"I will see you again; yes, I will certainly see you again, since you so
desire it," said Silvestro, after a good deal of this. "And I will give
you what you ask, if it is in my power. But you must trust me so far:
you must go away from here, and wait till I send word. I shall owe you
every gratitude, every reward I can give you. Now, however, you must let
me go; and I must take with me the goatherd, who is as innocent of the
Jew's death as I am."

"Ah, I will do all that you wish," sighed Alessandro. "Sacred lady, I
will do it. But surely you will have pity upon a humble slave who has
served you long and faithfully, and now is putting himself in peril for
your pleasure. Pay me my poor fee, lady. Enrich me boundlessly with what
costs you so little."

So he urged, until--

"Well," says Silvestro, "I will do it. Rise up, Messere;