“This mild saint in long woman’s robes doesn’t look as if he could grasp anything strongly” thought Wilhelm, “yet his hands are callous and have toiled hard.”

When Belotti entered the room and saw the sleeping priest, he carefully pushed a pillow under his head and beckoned to Wilhelm to follow him into the entry.

“We won’t grudge him a little rest,” said the Italian.  “He has sat beside the padrona’s bed from yesterday noon until two hours ago.  Usually she doesn’t know what is going on around her, but as soon as consciousness returns she wants religious consolation.  She still refuses to take the sacrament for the dying, for she won’t admit that she is approaching her end.  Yet often, when the disease attacks her more sharply, she asks in mortal terror if everything is ready, for she is afraid to die without extreme unction.”

“And how is Fraulein Henrica?”

“A very little better.”

The priest had now come out of the little room.  Belotti reverently kissed his hand and Wilhelm bowed respectfully.

“I had fallen asleep,” said Damianus simply and naturally, but in a voice less deep and powerful than would have been expected from his broad breast and tall figure.  “I will read the mass, visit my sick, and then return.  Have you thought better of it, Belotti?”

“It won’t do sir, the Virgin knows it won’t do.  My dismissal was given for the first of May, this is the eighth, and yet I’m still here—­I haven’t left the house because I’m a Christian!  Now the ladies have a good physician, Sister Gonzaga is doing her duty, you yourself will earn by your nursing a place among the martyrs in Paradise, so, without making myself guilty of a sin, I can tie up my bundle.”

“You will not go, Belotti,” said the priest firmly.  “If you still insist on having your own way, at least do not call yourself a Christian.”

“You will stay,” cried Wilhelm, “if only for the sake of the young lady, to whom you still feel kindly.”  Belotti shook his head, and answered quietly: 

“You can add nothing, young sir, to what the holy Father represented to me yesterday.  But my mind is made up, I shall go; yet as I value the holy Father’s good opinion and yours, I beg you to do me the favor to listen to me.  I have passed my sixty-second birthday, and an old horse or an old servant stands a long time in the market-place before any one will buy them.  There might probably be a place in Brussels for a Catholic steward, who understands his business, but this old heart longs to return to Naples—­ardently, ardently, unutterably.  You have seen our blue sea and our sky, young sir, and I yearn for them, but even more for other, smaller things.  It now seems a joy that I can speak in my native language to you, Herr Wilhelm, and you, holy Father.  But there is a country where every one uses the same tongue that I do.  There is a little village at the foot of Vesuvius—­merciful Heavens!  Many a person