ove of the Holy Madonna!" said the woman, in a wailing
voice; "will you look at my poor bimbo? I know I can't pay you for it,
but I took it into the Nunziata last night, and it's turned a worse
colour than before; it's the convulsions. But when I was holding it
before the Santissima Nunziata, I remembered they said there was a new
doctor come who cured everything; and so I thought it might be the will
of the Holy Madonna that I should bring it to you."

"Sit down, Maestro, sit down," said Nello. "Here is an opportunity for
you; here are honourable witnesses who will declare before the
Magnificent Eight that they have seen you practising honestly and
relieving a poor woman's child. And then if your life is in danger, the
Magnificent Eight will put you in prison a little while just to insure
your safety, and after that, their sbirri will conduct you out of
Florence by night, as they did the zealous Frate Minore who preached
against the Jews. What! our people are given to stone-throwing; but we
have magistrates."

The doctor, unable to refuse, seated himself in the shaving-chair,
trembling, half with fear and half with rage, and by this time quite
unconscious of the lather which Nello had laid on with such profuseness.
He deposited his medicine-case on his knees, took out his precious
spectacles (wondrous Florentine device!) from his wallet, lodged them
carefully above his flat nose and high ears, and lifting up his brows,
turned towards the applicant.

"O Santiddio! look at him," said the woman, with a more piteous wail
than ever, as she held out the small mummy, which had its head
completely concealed by dingy drapery wound round the head of the
portable cradle, but seemed to be struggling and crying in a demoniacal
fashion under this imprisonment. "The fit is on him! _Ohime_! I know
what colour he is; it's the evil eye--oh!"

The doctor, anxiously holding his knees together to support his box,
bent his spectacles towards the baby, and said cautiously, "It may be a
new disease; unwind these rags, Monna!"

The contadina, with sudden energy, snatched off the encircling linen,
when out struggled--scratching, grinning, and screaming--what the doctor
in his fright fully believed to be a demon, but what Tito recognised as
Vaiano's monkey, made more formidable by an artificial blackness, such
as might have come from a hasty rubbing up the chimney.

Up started the unfortunate doctor, letting his medicine-box fall,