shut himself into his room, without going up to see his poor mother, who
was weeping, sad and solitary over her son's ingratitude, and like every
other mother taking her revenge by praying God to bless him.

The Duke of Durazzo walked up and down his room several times like a
lion in a cage, counting the minutes in a fever of impatience, and was
on the point of summoning a servant and renewing his commands, when two
dull raps on the door informed him that the person he was waiting for
had arrived. He opened at once, and a man of about fifty, dressed in
black from head to foot, entered, humbly bowing, and carefully shut the
door behind him. Charles threw himself into an easy-chair, and gazing
fixedly at the man who stood before him, his eyes on the ground and his
arms crossed upon his breast in an attitude of the deepest respect and
blind obedience, he said slowly, as though weighing each word--

"Master Nicholas of Melazzo, have you any remembrance left of the
services I once rendered you?"

The man to whom these words were addressed trembled in every limb, as if
he heard the voice of Satan come to claim his soul; then lifting a look
of terror to his questioner's face, he asked in a voice of gloom--

"What have I done, my lord, to deserve this reproach?"

"It is not a reproach: I ask a simple question."

"Can my lord doubt for a moment of my eternal gratitude? Can I forget
the favours your Excellency showed me? Even if I could so lose my reason
and my memory, are not my wife and son ever here to remind me that to
you we owe all our life, our honour, and our fortune? I was guilty of an