“Yes, directly.  He seemed in a hurry like to get to bed.  When he was about half undressed he said it was time I was in bed myself, and sent me away, and I heard him lock the door.”

“Does he generally lock the door at night?” asked the lawyer.

“No; and I knew by that that he meant to have a good sleep, and not be disturbed this morning.  So I never went near him till I heard his bell, between ten and eleven o’clock; and when I went he was just getting out of bed, so that he had a matter of six hours’ sleep.”

“It don’t seem to have done him much good any way,” rejoined the lawyer, thinking to himself that the hours during which Nanni supposed his master to have been sleeping, had more probably been spent in restless agitation, the result of bringing his mind to the determination which he had definitely announced to the lawyer, when he had summoned him about an hour after he had risen from his sleepless bed.  “I shall come and see how he is to-morrow morning,” the lawyer added; “and I hope I may bring some good news about Signor Ludovico.”

Behind the Palazzo Castelmare there was an extensive range of stabling and coach-houses, with a large stable-yard opening on to a back street, which was the nearest way to the house of the Signor Professore Tomosarchi, on whom Signor Fortini thought he would call, just to ask whether he had yet seen the body, or at what hour in the morning he thought of making his post-mortem examination.  Crossing the stable-yard for this purpose, the lawyer was accosted by Niccolo the groom, who was engaged in doing his office on a handsome bay mare at the stable-door.

Niccolo was the oldest servant in the establishment, having filled the same place he now held under the Marchese’s father.  He was an older man by several years than the Marchese Lamberto; and he it had been, who, when the present Marchese was a child of ten years old, had put him on his first pony, and been his riding-master.  Old Niccolo, like every other old Italian servant of the old school, held, as the first and most important article of his creed, the unquestioning belief that the Castelmare family was the most noble, the most ancient, and in every respect the grandest in the world, and the Marchese Lamberto the greatest and most powerful man in it.  He was a good sort of man in his way, was old Niccolo; went to confession regularly; and did his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased Providence to call him according to his lights; was honest in his dealings; knew in a rough sort of way that veracity was good, and unveracity bad, to such an extent as to understand that truth-telling should be the rule and lying the exception; and was faithful to the death to his employer.