The four faces withdrew somewhat, but continued looking at him fixedly with an expression, perhaps, of increased alarm.

“Go away, I tell you!” continued Don Rocco.

They went out silently and stopped outside to listen and spy.

“Well, then,” said the professor, “what are your feelings?”

“Nothing.”

“But, then, why are you in bed?”

Don Rocco turned with his face to the wall.  The tears were coming back again now.  He was unable to speak.

“But in the name of heaven,” insisted the professor, “what is it?”

“I am getting over it, I am getting over it,” sobbed Don Rocco.

The professor did not know what to do nor what to think.  He asked him whether he wanted water, and the old beggar went down at once to get a glassful and gave it to Marin.  Don Rocco did not want it in the least, but kept on repeating:  “Thanks, thanks, I am getting over it,” and drank it obsequiously.

“Well, then?” continued the professor.

“You are right,” answered Don Rocco.

“About what?”

“About the woman.”

“Lucia?  Right!  And by the way, where is Lucia?  Not here?  Run away?”

Don Rocco nodded.  Marin looked at him stupefied and repeating, “Run away?  Run away?” The other four came back into the room echoing, “Run away?  Run away?”

“But listen!” said the professor.  “Are you staying in bed for this reason?  Are you humiliating yourself in this way?  Come on and get dressed.”

Don Rocco looked at him, reddened up to the top of his head, narrowed his tear-wet eyes in a smile, which meant:  “Now it will be your turn to laugh.”

“I have no clothes,” he said.

“What?”

The professor added to this word a gesture which meant, “Did she carry them away?” Don Rocco responded also by a mere nod; and seeing that his friend with difficulty restrained a burst of laughter, he also tried to laugh.

“Poor Don Rocco,” said the professor, and added, still with a laugh in his throat, heartfelt words of sympathy, of comfort, and asked for every detail of what had happened.  “Oh, if you had only listened to me!” he concluded.  “If you had only sent her away!”

“Yes,” said Don Rocco, accepting even this with humiliation.  “You are right.  And now what will the countess say?”

The professor sighed.

“What can I say, my son?  She will say nothing.  This also has happened, that your successor wrote yesterday that he had definitively gotten rid of his present engagements and was at the disposal of the countess.”

Don Rocco was silent, heart-broken.  “I must look at the time,” said he, after a moment’s silence, “because at half-past nine they will come here with a horse to take me away.  It will be necessary to ask the archpriest or the chaplain to lend me a suit of clothes.”

“Let me, let me!” exclaimed the professor, full of zeal.  “I will go home and send it to you immediately.  You will give it back to me at your leisure, when you are able.”  A lively gratitude cleared the face and moved the eyelids of Don Rocco.