Close to the Church of San Michele, where a brazen archangel with outstretched wings flaunts in the blue sky, is the narrow, crypt-like street of San Salvador.  Here stands the Boccarini Palace.  It is an ancient structure, square and large, with an overhanging roof and open, pillared gallery.  On the first floor there is a stone balcony.  Four rows of windows divide the front.  The lower ones, barred with iron, are dismal to the eye.  Over the principal entrance are the Boccarini arms, carved on a stone escutcheon, supported by two angels, the whole so moss-eaten the details cannot be traced.  Above is a marquis’s coronet in which a swallow has built its nest.  Both in and out it is a house where poverty has set its seal.  The family is dying out.  When Marchesa Boccarini dies, the palace will be sold, and the money divided among her daughters.

As dusk was settling into night a carriage rattled along the deserted street.  The horses—­a pair of splendid bays—­struck sparks out of the granite pavement.  With a bang they draw up at the entrance, under an archway, guarded by a grille of rusty iron.  A bell is rung; it only echoes through the gloomy court.  The bell was rung again, but no one came.  At last steps were heard, and a dried-up old man, with a face like parchment, and little ferret eyes, appeared, hastily dragging his arms into a coat much too large for him.

He shuffled to the front and bowed.  Taking a key from his pocket he unlocked the iron gates, then planted himself on the threshold, and turned his ear toward the well-appointed brougham, and Count Nobili seated within.

“Do the ladies receive?” Nobili called out.  The old man nodded, bringing his best ear and ferret eyes to bear upon him.

“Yes, the ladies do receive.  Will the excellency descend?”

Count Nobili jumped out and hurried through the archway into a court surrounded by a colonnade.

It is very dark.  The palace rises upward four lofty stories.  Above is a square patch of sky, on which a star trembles.  The court is full of damp, unwholesome odors.  The foot slips upon the slimy pavement.  Nobili stopped.  The old man came limping after, buttoning his coat together.

“Ah! poor me!—­The excellency is young!” He spoke in the odd, muffled voice, peculiar to the deaf.  “The excellency goes so fast he will fall if he does not mind.  Our court-yard is very damp; the stairs are old.”

“Which is the way up-stairs?” Nobili asked, impatiently.  “It is so dark I have forgotten the turn.”

“Here, excellency—­here to the right.  By the Madonna there, in the niche, with the light before it.  A thousand excuses!  The excellency will excuse me, but I have not yet lit the lamp on the stairs.  I was resting.  There are so many visitors to the Signora Marchesa.  The excellency will not tell the Signora Marchesa that it was dark upon the stairs?  Per pieta!”

The shriveled old man placed himself full in Nobili’s path, and held out his hands like claws entreatingly.