“You, prince!” he cried, in evident delight.  “What saint has brought you?”

“I heard of your accident, and so I came to see if I could do anything for you.  How are you?”

“As you see,” replied Gouache.  “In a hospitable tomb, with my head tied up like an imperfectly-resurrected Lazarus.  For the rest there is nothing the matter with me, except that they have taken away my clothes, which is something of an obstacle to my leaving the house at once.  I feel as if I had been in a revolution and had found myself on the wrong side of the barricade—­nothing worse than that.”

“You are in good spirits, at all events.  But are you not seriously hurt?”

“Oh, nothing—­a broken collar-bone somewhere, I believe, and some part of my head gone—­I am not quite sure which, and a bad headache, and nothing to eat, and a general sensation as though somebody had made an ineffectual effort to turn me into a sausage.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“Nothing.  He is a man of action.  He bled me because I had not the strength to strangle him, and poured decoctions of boiled grass down my throat because I could not speak.  He has fantastic ideas about the human body.”

“But you will have to stay here several days,” said Giovanni, considerably amused by Gouache’s view of his own case.

“Several days!  Not even several hours, if I can help it.”

“Things do not go so quickly in Rome.  You must be patient.”

“In order to starve, when there is food as near as the Corso?” inquired the artist.  “To be butchered by a Roman phlebotomist, and drenched with infusions of hay by the Principessa Montevarchi, when I might be devising means of being presented to her daughter?  What do you take me for?  I suppose the young lady with the divine eyes is her daughter, is she not?”

“You mean Donna Faustina, I suppose.  Yes.  She is the youngest, just out of the Sacro Cuore.  She was in the drawing-room when I called just now.  How did you see her?”

“Last night, as they brought me upstairs, I was lucky enough to wake up just as she was looking at me.  What eyes!  I can think of nothing else.  Seriously, can you not help me to get out of here?”

“So that you may fall in love with Donna Faustina as soon as possible, I suppose,” answered Giovanni with a laugh.  “It seems to me that there is but one thing to do, if you are really strong enough.  Send for your clothes, get up, go into the drawing-room and thank the princess for her hospitality.”

“That is easily said.  Nothing is done in this house without the written permission of the old prince, unless I am much mistaken.  Besides, there is no bell.  I might as well be under arrest in the guard-room of the barracks.  Presently the doctor will come and bleed me again and the princess will send me some more boiled grass.  I am not very fat, as it is, but another day of this diet will make me diaphanous—­I shall cast no shadow.  A nice thing, to be caught without a shadow on parade!”