In the room, into which he ran behind the girl, on an old-fashioned
horse-hair sofa, lay a boy of fourteen, white all over--white, with
a yellowish tinge like wax or old marble--he was strikingly like the
girl, obviously her brother. His eyes were closed, a patch of shadow
fell from his thick black hair on a forehead like stone, and delicate,
motionless eyebrows; between the blue lips could be seen clenched
teeth. He seemed not to be breathing; one arm hung down to the floor,
the other he had tossed above his head. The boy was dressed, and his
clothes were closely buttoned; a tight cravat was twisted round his
neck.

The girl rushed up to him with a wail of distress. 'He is dead, he is
dead!' she cried; 'he was sitting here just now, talking to me--and
all of a sudden he fell down and became rigid.... My God! can nothing
be done to help him? And mamma not here! Pantaleone, Pantaleone, the
doctor!' she went on suddenly in Italian. 'Have you been for the
doctor?'

'Signora, I did not go, I sent Luise,' said a hoarse voice at the
door, and a little bandy-legged old man came hobbling into the room in
a lavender frock coat with black buttons, a high white cravat, short
nankeen trousers, and blue worsted stockings. His diminutive little
face was positively lost in a mass of iron-grey hair. Standing up in
all directions, and falling back in ragged tufts, it gave the old
man's figure a resemblance to a crested hen--a resemblance the more
striking, that under the dark-grey mass nothing could be distinguished
but a beak nose and round yellow eyes.

'Luise will run fast, and I can't run,' the old man went on in
Italian, dragging his flat gouty feet, shod in high slippers with