ould
tell when I might return. My salary as professor is paid to me
quarterly, and it was yet some weeks to the time when it was due. I
had only a few francs remaining,--not more than enough to pay my rent
and to feed Mariuccia and me. I had paid at Christmas the last
instalment due on my vineyard out of Porta Salara, and though I owed
no man anything I had no money, and no prospect of any for some time.
And yet I could not leave home on a long journey without at least two
hundred scudi in my pocket. A scudo is a dollar, and a dollar has five
francs, so that I wanted a thousand francs. You see, in spite of the
baron's hint about the mountains, I thought I might have to travel all
over Italy before I satisfied Nino.

A thousand francs is a great deal of money,--it is a Peru, as we say.
I had not the first sou toward it. I thought a long time. I wondered
if the old piano were worth anything; whether anybody would give me
money for my manuscripts, the results of patient years of labour and
study; my old gold scarf pin, my seal ring, and even my silver watch,
which keeps really very good time,--what were they worth? But it would
not be much, not the tenth part of what I wanted. I was in despair,
and I tried to sleep. Then a thought came to me.

"I am a donkey," I said. "There is the vineyard itself,--my little
vineyard beyond Porta Salara. It is mine and is worth half as much
again as I need." And I slept quietly till morning.

It is true, and I am sure it is natural, that in the daylight my
resolution looked a little differently to me than it did in the quiet
night. I had toiled and scraped a great deal more than you know to buy
that small piece of land, and it seemed much more my own than all
Serveti had ever been in my better days. Then I shut myself up in my
room and read Nino's letter over again, though it pained me very much;
for I needed courage. And when I had read it, I took some papers in my
pocket, and put on my hat and my old cloak, which Nino will never want
any more now for his midnight serenades, and I went out to sell my
little vineyard.

"It is for my boy," I said, to give myself some comfort.

But it is one thing to want to buy, and it is quite another thing to
want to sell. All day I went from one man to another with my
papers,--all the agents who deal in those things; but they only said
they thought it might be sold in time; it would take many days, and
perhaps weeks.

"But I want to sell it to-d