he was doing, and if his strange behaviour escaped observation this was due to his solitary way of living.  He did not keep away from the palace during the whole day, from a vague idea that his absence might be thought suspicious.  He spent a certain number of hours in the library, doing nothing, although he carefully spread out a number of books before him and dipped his pen into the ink from time to time, stupidly, mechanically, as though his fingers could not forget the habit so long familiar to them.  His eyes,—­which had formerly been unusually bright, had grown dull and almost bleared, though they glanced at times very quickly from one part of the room to another.  That was when he saw strange things moving in the vast hall, between him and the bookcases.  When they had disappeared, his glassy look returned, so that his eyeballs seemed merely to reflect the light, as inanimate objects do, without absorbing it, and conveying it to the seat of vision.  His face grew daily more thin and ghastly.  It was by force of custom that he stayed so long in the place where he had spent so much of his life.  The intervals of semi-lucidity seemed terribly long, though they were in reality short enough, and the effort to engage his attention in work helped him to live through them.  He had never gone down to the apartments where the family lived, since he had knelt before the catafalque on the day after the murder.  Indeed, there was no reason why he should go there, and no one noticed his absence.  He was a very insignificant person in the palace.  As for any one coming to find him among the books, nothing seemed more improbable.  The library was swept out in the early morning and no one entered it again during the twenty-four hours.  He never went out into the corridor now, but left his coat upon a chair near him, when he remembered to bring it.  As a sort of precautionary measure against fear, he locked the door which opened upon the passage when he came in the morning, unlocking it again when he went away in order that the servant who did the sweeping might be able to get in.

The Princess Montevarchi was still dangerously ill, and Faustina had not been willing to leave her.  San Giacinto and Flavia were not living in the house, but they spent a good deal of time there, because San Giacinto had ideas of his own about duty, to which his wife was obliged to submit even if she did not like them.  Faustina was neither nervous nor afraid of solitude, and was by no means in need of her sister’s company, so that when the two were together their conversation was not always of the most affectionate kind.  The consequence was that the young girl tried to be alone as much as possible when she was not at her mother’s bedside.  One day, having absolutely nothing to do, she grew desperate.  It was very hard not to think of Anastase, when she was in the solitude of her own room, with no occupation to direct her mind.  A week earlier she had been only too glad to have the opportunity of dreaming