recluse came or went in the palace or in the streets of Ferrara he seemed to be searching for something which he could not find.  He walked dreamily, undecidedly, preoccupied like a man battling with an idea or with a memory.  While the young man gave magnificent entertainments and the palace re-echoed his mirth, while the horses pawed the ground in the courtyard and the pages quarreled at their game of dice on the stairs, Bartholomeo ate seven ounces of bread a day and drank water.  If he asked for a little poultry it was merely that he might give the bones to a black spaniel, his faithful companion.  He never complained of the noise.  During his illness if the blast of horns or the barking of dogs interrupted his sleep, he only said:  “Ah, Don Juan has come home.”  Never before was so untroublesome and indulgent a father to be found on this earth; consequently young Belvidero, accustomed to treat him without ceremony, had all the faults of a spoiled child.  His attitude toward Bartholomeo was like that of a capricious woman toward an elderly lover, passing off an impertinence with a smile, selling his good humor and submitting to be loved.  In calling up the picture of his youth, Don Juan recognized that it would be difficult to find an instance in which his father’s goodness had failed him.  He felt a newborn remorse while he traversed the corridor, and he very nearly forgave his father for having lived so long.  He reverted to feelings of filial piety, as a thief returns to honesty in the prospect of enjoying a well-stolen million.

Soon the young man passed into the high, chill rooms of his father’s apartment.  After feeling a moist atmosphere and breathing the heavy air and the musty odor which is given forth by old tapestries and furniture covered with dust, he found himself in the antique room of the old man, in front of a sick bed and near a dying fire.  A lamp standing on a table of Gothic shape shed its streams of uneven light sometimes more, sometimes less strongly upon the bed and showed the form of the old man in ever-varying aspects.  The cold air whistled through the insecure windows, and the snow beat with a dull sound against the panes.

This scene formed so striking a contrast to the one which Don Juan had just left that he could not help shuddering.  He felt cold when, on approaching the bed, a sudden flare of light, caused by a gust of wind, illumined his father’s face.  The features were distorted; the skin, clinging tightly to the bones, had a greenish tint, which was made the more horrible by the whiteness of the pillows on which the old man rested; drawn with pain, the mouth, gaping and toothless, gave breath to sighs which the howling of the tempest took Tip and drew out into a dismal wail.  In spite of these signs of dissolution an incredible expression of power shone in the face.  The eyes, hallowed by disease, retained a singular steadiness.  A superior spirit was fighting there with death.  It seemed as if Bartholomeo sought