“I am saved!” she cried; “the plague cannot walk in the same road with the king!”

Humbert smiled, and regarded her somewhat as an indulgent father might regard a spoiled daughter; but he said nothing, and passed on.  A cluster of men and women standing at the open door of one of the poorest-looking houses in the street next attracted the monarch’s attention.  There was some noisy argument going on; two or three beccamorti were loudly discussing together and swearing profusely—­ some women were crying bitterly, and in the center of the excited group a coffin stood on end as though waiting for an occupant.  One of the gentlemen in attendance on the king preceded him and announced his approach, whereupon the loud clamor of tongues ceased, the men bared their heads, and the women checked their sobs.

“What is wrong here, my friends?” the monarch asked with exceeding gentleness.

There was silence for a moment; the beccamorti looked sullen and ashamed.  Then one of the women, with a fat good-natured face and eyes rimmed redly round with weeping, elbowed her way through the little throng to the front and spoke.

“May the Holy Virgin and saints bless your majesty!” she cried, in shrill accents.  “And as for what is wrong, it would soon be right if those shameless pigs,” pointing to the beccamorti, “would let us alone.  They would kill a man rather than wait an hour—­one little hour!  The girl is dead, your majesty—­and Giovanni, poor lad! will not leave her; he has his two arms round her tight—­Holy Virgin!—­ think of it! and she a cholera corpse—­and do what we can, he will not be parted from her, and they seek her body for the burial.  And if we force him away, poverino, he will lose his head for certain.  One little hour, your majesty, just one, and the reverend father will come and persuade Giovanni better than we can.”

The king raised his hand with a slight gesture of command—­the little crowd parted before him—­and he entered the miserable dwelling wherein lay the corpse that was the cause of all the argument.  His attendants followed; I, too, availed myself of a corner in the doorway.  The scene disclosed was so terribly pathetic that few could look upon it without emotion—­Humbert of Italy himself uncovered his head and stood silent.  On a poor pallet bed lay the fair body of a girl in her first youth, her tender loveliness as yet untouched even by the disfiguring marks of the death that had overtaken her.  One would have thought she slept, had it not been for the rigidity of her stiffened limbs, and the wax-like pallor of her face and hands.  Right across her form, almost covering it from view, a man lay prone, as though he had fallen there lifeless—­indeed he might have been dead also for any sign he showed to the contrary.  His arms were closed firmly round the girl’s corpse—­his face was hidden from view on the cold breast that would no more respond to the warmth of his caresses.  A straight beam of sunlight shot like a golden spear into the dark little room and lighted up the whole scene—­the prostrate figures on the bed—­the erect form of the compassionate king, and the grave and anxious faces of the little crowd of people who stood around him.