taken off his three-cornered hat, and his high peaked head was barely covered with scanty silver-grey hair.  When he dropped his paper and looked about him for the waiter, evidently wishing to pay for his coffee, he showed a face sufficiently remarkable to deserve description.  The prominent feature was the enormous, beak-like nose—­the nose of the fanatic which is not to be mistaken amongst thousands, with its high, arching bridge, its wide, sensitive nostrils, and its preternaturally sharp, down-turning point.  But the rest of the priest’s face was not in keeping with what was most striking in it.  The forehead was not powerful, narrow, prominent—­but rather, broad and imaginative.  The chin was round and not enough developed; the clean-shaven lips had a singularly gentle expression, and the very near-sighted blue eyes were not set deeply enough to give strength to the look.  The priest carried his head somewhat bent and forward, in a sort of deprecating way, which made his long nose seem longer, and his short chin more retreating.  The skull was unusually high and peaked at the point where phrenologists place the organ of veneration.  The man himself was tall and exceedingly thin, and looked as though he fasted too often and too long.  He was certainly a very ugly man, judged according to the standards of human beauty; and yet there was about him an air of kindness and sincerity which had in it something almost saintly, together with a very unmistakable individual identity.  He was one of those men whom one can neither forget nor mistake when one has met them once.  Bosio did not notice him, being much absorbed by his own thoughts.  The waiter came to ask what he wished, and was stopped on his way back by the priest, who desired to pay for what he had taken.  But Bosio had turned to the window again, and sat looking out and watching the people in the broad semicircular Piazza.

The priest, having paid his little score, carefully folded his newspaper and put it into the wide pocket of his cassock.  Then he gathered up the collar of his big cloak behind him, as he sat, and began to edge his way out from behind the little marble table.  But the long folds had fallen far on each side—­so far that Bosio had unawares sat down upon the cloth, and as the priest tried to get out, he felt the cloak being dragged from under him.  The priest stopped and turned, just as Bosio rose with an apology on his lips, which became an exclamation of surprise, as he began to speak.

“Don Teodoro!” he cried.  “You were next to me, and I did not see you!”

The priest’s eyelids contracted to help his imperfect sight, and he smiled as he moved nearer to Bosio.

“Bosio!” he exclaimed, when he had recognized him.  “I am almost blind, but I was sure I knew your voice.”

“You are in Naples, and you have not let me know it?” said Bosio, reproachfully and interrogatively.

“I have not been in Naples two hours, and have just left my bag at my usual quarters with Don Matteo.  Then I came here to get a cup of coffee, and now I was going to you.  Besides, it is the tenth of December.  You know that I always come on the tenth every year, and stay until the twentieth, in order to be back in Muro four days before Christmas.  But I am glad I have met you here, for I should have missed you at the Palazzo.”