think of him—­in all the distraction of my sufferings, his figure stands out like a supreme embodied Beneficent Force surrounded by the clear light of unselfish goodness—­a light in which Italia suns her fair face and smiles again with the old sweet smile of her happiest days of high achievement—­days in which he children were great, simply because they were earnest. The fault of all modern labor lies in the fact that there is no heart in anything we do—­we seldom love our work for work’s sake—­we perform it solely for what we can get by it.  Therein lies the secret of failure.  Friends will scarcely serve each other unless they can also serve their own interests—­true, there are exceptions to this rule, but they are deemed fools for their pains.

As soon as the king disappeared I also left the scene of the foregoing incident.  I had a fancy to visit the little restaurant where I had been taken ill, and after some trouble I found it.  The door stood open.  I saw the fat landlord, Pietro, polishing his glasses as though he had never left off; and there in the same corner was the very wooden bench on which I had lain—­where I had—­ as was generally supposed—­died.  I stepped in.  The landlord looked up and bade me good-day.  I returned his salutation, and ordered some coffee and rolls of bread.  Seating myself carelessly at one of the little tables I turned over the newspaper, while he bustled about in haste to serve me.  As he dusted and rubbed up a cup and saucer for my use, he said, briskly,

“You have had a long voyage, amico?  And successful fishing?”

For a moment I was confused and knew not what to answer, but gathering my wits together I smiled and answered readily in the affirmative.

“And you?” I said, gayly.  “How goes the cholera?”

The landlord shook his head dolefully.

“Holy Joseph! do not speak of it.  The people die like flies in a honey-pot.  Only yesterday—­body of Bacchus!—­who would have thought it?”

And he sighed deeply as he poured out the steaming coffee, and shook his head more sorrowfully than before.

“Why, what happened yesterday?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well what he was going to say; “I am a stranger in Naples, and empty of news.”

The perspiring Pietro laid a fat thumb on the marble top of the table, and with it traced a pattern meditatively.

“You never heard of the rich Count Romani?” he inquired.

I made a sign in the negative, and bent my face over my coffee-cup.

“Ah, well!” he went on with a half groan, “it does not matter—­there is no Count Romani any more.  It is all gone—­finished!  But he was rich—­as rich as the king, they say—­yet see how low the saints brought him!  Fra Cipriano of the Benedictines carried him in here yesterday morning—­he was struck by the plague—­in five hours he was dead,” here the landlord caught a mosquito and killed it—­“ah! as dead as that zinzara!  Yes, he lay dead on that very wooden bench opposite to you.  They buried him before sunset.  It is like a bad dream!”