" I replied solemnly. "Didn't you know that?
God is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear twenty fat farms on my
back."

"God lives," Pons asserted fervently. "God lives, and his kingdom is at
hand. I tell you, master, it is at hand. It may be no later than to-
morrow that the earth shall pass away."

"So said they in old Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of them to light
his sports."

Pons regarded me pityingly.

"Too much learning is a sickness," he complained. "I was always opposed
to it. But you must have your will and drag my old body about with you--a-
studying astronomy and numbers in Venice, poetry and all the Italian _fol-
de-rols_ in Florence, and astrology in Pisa, and God knows what in that
madman country of Germany. Pish for the philosophers! I tell you,
master, I, Pons, your servant, a poor old man who knows not a letter from
a pike-staff--I tell you God lives, and the time you shall appear before
him is short." He paused with sudden recollection, and added: "He is
here, the priest you spoke of."

On the instant I remembered my engagement.

"Why did you not tell me before?" I demanded angrily.

"What did it matter?" Pons shrugged his shoulders. "Has he not been
waiting two hours as it is?"

"Why didn't you call me?"

He regarded me with a thoughtful, censorious eye.

"And you rolling to bed and shouting like chanticleer, 'Sing cucu, sing
cucu, cucu nu nu cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.'"

He mocked me with the senseless refrain in an ear-jangling falsetto.
Without doubt I had bawled the nonsense out on my way to bed.

"You have a good memory," I commented drily, as I essayed a moment to
drape my shoulders with the new sable cloak ere I tossed it to Pons to
put aside. He shook his head sourly.

"No need of memory when you roared it over and over for the thousandth
time till half the inn was a-knock at the door to spit you for the sleep-
killer you were. And when I had you decently in the bed, did you not
call me to you and command, if the devil called, to tell him my lady
slept? And did you not call me back again, and, with a grip on my arm
that leaves it bruised and black this day, command me, as I loved life,
fat meat, and the warm fire, to call you not of the morning save for one
thing?"

"Which was?" I prompted, unable for the life of me to guess what I could
have said.

"Which was the heart of one, a black buzzard, you said, by name
Martinelli--whoeve