“Poor wretch!” I said to myself, and went back to my room, closing the door carefully behind me.

At first I thought of rousing the host, and explaining to him my objections to being left almost in the same room with a corpse.  But I reflected that it would be foolish to seem afraid of it, when I was really not at all timid, and so I went to bed and slept until dawn.  But when I went downstairs I found the innkeeper, and gave him a piece of my mind.

“What sort of an inn do you keep?  What manners are these?” I cried angrily.  “What diavolo put into your pumpkin head to give me a sepulchre for a room?”

He seemed much disturbed at what I said, and broke out into a thousand apologies.  But I was not to be so easily pacified.

“Do you think,” I demanded, “that I will ever come here again, or advise any of my friends to come here?  It is insufferable.  I will write to the police—­” But at this he began to shed tears and to wring his hands, saying it was not his fault.

“You see, signore, it was my wife who made me arrange it so.  Oh! these women—­the devil has made them all!  It was her father—­the old dead man you saw.  He died yesterday morning—­may he rest!—­and we will bury him to-day.  You see everyone knows that unless a dead man is watched by someone from another town his soul will not rest in peace.  My wife’s father was a jettatore; he had the evil eye, and people knew it for miles around, so I could not persuade anyone from the other villages to sit by him and watch his body, though I sent everywhere all day yesterday.  At last that wife of mine—­maledictions on her folly!—­said, ’It is my father, after all, and his soul must rest, at any price.  If you put a traveller in the next room, and leave the door open, it will be the same thing; and so he will be in peace.’  That is the way it happened, signore,” he continued, after wiping away his tears; “you see I could not help it at all.  But if you will overlook it, I will not make any charges for your stay.  My wife shall pay me.  She has poultry by the hundred.  I will pay myself with her chickens.”

“Very good,” said I, well pleased at having got so cheap a lodging.  “But I am a just man, and I will pay for what I have eaten and drunk, and you can take the night’s lodging out of your wife’s chickens, as you say.”  So we were both satisfied.[Footnote:  This incident actually occurred, precisely as related.]

The storm of the night had passed away, leaving everything wet and the air cool and fresh.  I wrapped my cloak about me and went into the market-place to see if I could pick up any news.  It was already late for the country, and there were few people about.  Here and there, in the streets, a wine-cart was halting on its way to Rome, while the rough carter went through the usual arrangement of exchanging some of his employer’s wine for food for himself, filling up the barrel with good pure water that never hurt anyone.  I wandered