The doctor came, a clever young man, whom Veronica had procured for the good of the village.  He shook his head, though he tried to speak cheerfully to Gianluca’s father and mother.  But he advised them to send for the great authority whom they had consulted in Naples, and under whom he himself had studied.  Veronica spoke with him in an outer room.

“I fear that he cannot live, but I am not infallible,” he said.

“How long will he live, if he is going to die?” asked Veronica, pale and quiet.

“Do not ask me—­it is guess-work,” answered the young doctor.  “I think he may live a fortnight.  He is practically paralyzed from his waist downwards—­it is almost complete.  What he eats does not nourish him.”

“What has caused this?”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders, smiled faintly, and made a gesture which in the south signifies the inevitable.

“It is a decayed race,” he said; “a family too old—­there is no more blood in them—­what shall I say?”

“I do not believe that has anything to do with it,” replied Veronica, rather proudly.  “The Serra are as old as they.  Did you see that gentleman who is Don Gianluca’s friend?  He is descended from Tancred.”

“It is other blood,” said the doctor.

He went away, and the great physician who lived in Naples was sent for at once.  A carriage went down to Eboli to meet him.  He came, looked, asked questions, and shook his head, very much as his pupil had done.  He stayed a night, and when it was late, Veronica and Taquisara were alone with him.  He was a fat man, with enormous shoulders and very short legs, and a round face and dreamy eyes set too low for proportion of feature.  Taquisara thought that he was like a turtle standing on its hind flippers, preternaturally endowed with a hemispherical black stomach, and a large watch chain; but the idea did not seem comic to him, for he was in no humour to be amused at anything.

The professor—­for he was one—­talked long and learnedly, using a number of Latin words with edifying terminations.  In spite of this, however, he was not without common sense.

“I have known people to recover when they seemed to have no chance at all,” he said.

“But you do not expect him to live?” asked Taquisara, pressing him.

“It is a desperate case,” answered the physician.

Being very fat, and having travelled all day, he went to bed.  Veronica remained alone in the drawing-room with Taquisara.  The latter slowly walked up and down between two opposite doors.  Veronica kept her seat, her head bent, listening to his regular footsteps.

“Donna Veronica—­” he stopped.

“Yes,” she answered, not looking up, but starting slightly at the sound of his voice.  “What do you wish to say?”

“You know that I have not always been fortunate in what I have said to you, and that makes me hesitate to speak now.  But it seems to me that, as Gianluca is really in the care of us two—­”