radise, and the next day crawled uphill, hour after
hour, over a jolting road to the village, where I lay while the
driver climbed to the farm with the Princess's letter. He was gone
five hours, but returned with the farmer, and the farmer's tall
eldest son; and the pair had brought a litter, in which to carry me
home.

The name of this good man was Bavarello--Giacomo Bavarello--and he
lived with his wife Battestina in a house full of lean children and
live-stock. The house had deep overhanging eaves, held down by cords
and weighted with rocks; but this must have been rather in deference
to the custom of the country than as a precaution against storms, for
the farmstead lay cosily in a dingle of the mountain, where storms
never reached it. Yet it took the sun from earliest dawn almost to
the last beam of midsummer daylight. Behind it a pine forest climbed
to the snow; and up and across the snow a corniced path traversed the
face of the mountain and joined the _diligence_-road a little below
the summit of the pass. At the point of junction stood a small
chapel, with a dwelling-room attached, where lived a brother from the
Benedictine _hospice_ on the far side of the pass. His name was
Brother Polifilo, and it was supposed that he had fallen in love with
solitude (else how could he have endured to live in such a place?);
yet his smile justified his name, and his manner of playing with the
children when he descended to bring us the consolations of religion--
which he did by arrangement with the infirm parish priest in the
valley. Also, on fine mornings when the snow held and the little
ones could be trusted along the path, the entire household of the
Bavarelli would troop up to Mass in his tiny chapel.

For me, it was many weeks before my sick brain allowed me to climb
beyond the pines; and many weeks, though the Princess always went
with me--before she told me all the story of what had happened in
Genoa. Yet we talked much, at one time and another, though we were
silent more; for the silences told more. Only our talk and our
silences were always of the present. It was understood that the
whole story of the past would come, some day, when I had strength for
it. Of the future we never spoke. I could not then have told why;
though now all too well I can.

Sick man though I was, bliss filled those days for me, and their
memory is steeped in bliss. Yet a thought began, after a while, to
trouble me. We were li