"Halloa, Sor Marzio!" cried this last guest, suddenly looking up from
the sheet he was reading, "here is news of your brother."

"What?" asked Marzio briefly, but as though the matter were utterly
indifferent to him. "Has he killed anybody, the assassin?" The
journalist laughed hoarsely at the jest.

"Not so bad as that," he answered. "He is getting advancement. They are
going to make him a canon of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is in the
_Osservatore Romano_ of this evening."

"He is good for nothing else," growled Marzio. "It is just like him not
to have told me anything about it."

"With the sympathy which exists between you, I am surprised," said the
journalist. "After all, you might convert him, and then he would be
useful. He will be an archdeacon next, and then a bishop--who
knows?--perhaps a cardinal!"

"You might as well talk of converting the horses on Monte Cavallo as of
making Paolo change his mind," replied Pandolfi, beginning to sip the
white wine he had ordered. "You don't know him--he is an angel, my
brother! Oh, quite an angel! I wish somebody would send him to heaven,
where he is so anxious to be!"

"Look out, Marzio!" exclaimed the lawyer, glancing from the vinegar
cruet towards the door and then at his friend.

"No such luck," returned the chiseller. "Nothing ever happens to those