“Maria Consuelo D’ARANJUEZ.”

Spicca received this letter early in the morning, and at mid-day he still sat in his chair, holding it in his hand.  His face was very white, his head hung forward upon his breast, his thin fingers were stiffened upon the thin paper.  Only the hardly perceptible rise and fall of the chest showed that he still breathed.

The clocks had already struck twelve when his old servant entered the room, a being thin, wizened, grey and noiseless as the ghost of a greyhound.  He stood still a moment before his master, expecting that he would look up, then bent anxiously over him and felt his hands.

Spicca slowly raised his sunken eyes.

“It will pass, Santi—­it will pass,” he said feebly.

Then he began to fold up the sheets slowly and with difficulty, but very neatly, as men of extraordinary skill with their hands do everything.  Santi looked at him doubtfully and then got a glass and a bottle of cordial from a small carved press in the corner.  Spicca drank the liqueur slowly and set the glass steadily upon the table.

“Bad news, Signor Conte?” asked the servant anxiously, and in a way which betrayed at once the kindly relations existing between the two.

“Very bad news,” Spicca answered sadly and shaking his head.

Santi sighed, restored the cordial to the press and took up the glass, as though he were about to leave the room.  But he still lingered near the table, glancing uneasily at his master as though he had something to say, but was hesitating to begin.

“What is it, Santi?” asked the count.

“I beg your pardon, Signor Conte—­you have had bad news—­if you will allow me to speak, there are several small economies which could still be managed without too much inconveniencing you.  Pardon the liberty, Signor Conte.”

“I know, I know.  But it is not money this time.  I wish it were.”

Santi’s expression immediately lost much of its anxiety.  He had shared his master’s fallen fortunes and knew better than he what he meant by a few more small economies, as he called them.

“God be praised, Signor Conte,” he said solemnly.  “May I serve the breakfast?”

“I have no appetite, Santi.  Go and eat yourself.”

“A little something?” Santi spoke in a coaxing way.  “I have prepared a little mixed fry, with toast, as you like it, Signor Conte, and the salad is good to-day—­ham and figs are also in the house.  Let me lay the cloth—­when you see, you will eat—­and just one egg beaten up with a glass of red wine to begin—­that will dispose the stomach.”