Herr Ritter laid down his three big volumes on a table that was absolutely littered from end to end with old manuscripts and curious fossilised-looking tomes in vellum covers.

“Ah, ’Giorno, Herr!” said the gentleman, looking up from his book; “what is that?”

He came towards us as he spoke, and opening the topmost volume of the pile which the old man had deposited on the table, examined the title-page.

“Sancta Maria! " cried he, his whole manner changing in a moment from easy indifference to earnest interest:  “what, you will part with this after all?  Why, it is the same book I offered you two hundred pistoles for at Rome!  You wouldn’t sell it then at any price, you said!”

“No, Signor, but I will now.”

Ah, it was a generous martyrdom, but the pangs of it were very grievous; what wonder that the martyr sighed a little!

“The same price, then, Herr?  Don’t let us bargain about it.  The Eminenza is liberal in these things, you know; and you’re poor, my friend, I know.”

He nodded at the old German with a sort of familiar patronage, as though he would have said, “Don’t be modest, I’ll stand by you!”

But the Herr seemed to notice neither words nor manner, though I thought the heart beneath the shabby coat recoiled at that instant somewhat unusually.

“The same price, if you please, Signor.”

The Cardinal’s agent, for such I guessed this tender-hearted individual before us to be, flashed a keen sudden glance of mingled scrutiny and surprise at the calm dignified face of the philosopher, whistled pleasantly a short aria of two notes, apparently with some design of assisting his mental digestion to victory over a tough morsel; and then turning to an iron-bound cashbox at his elbow, unlocked it, and produced therefrom the stipulated sum, which he counted out with much celerity, and forthwith handed to the old German.  With tremulous fingers the Herr gathered up the money, as though it had been the price of a friend’s betrayal, and drooped his noble head upon his breast, like a war-horse smitten to the heart in the passionate front of battle.

What he had done was registered in Heaven.

“Addio, Herr.”

“Guten-tag, Signor.”

Herr Ritter did not go back to his lodgings then.  He went past the low house with its green verandah, blistering under the fierce noon-sun, and across the pastures to the cottage of ’Lora Delcor.  She was sitting at the open door, her thin transparent palms pressed tightly together, as though she were praying, and her great fringed eyelids dark and heavy with their burden of pain.  Ah!  ’Lora!  ’Lora! “blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted!” Not in the world that men have made, daughter of earth, ah, not in that; but in the world that God shall make hereafter!

“Herr Ritter! you have been?  O tell me what she said!  ’Tista is not here, he is gone into the woods to gather herbs.”