t.
Therein lies the secret of failure. Friends will scarcely serve each
other unless they can also serve their own interests--true, there are
exceptions to this rule, but they are deemed fools for their pains.

As soon as the king disappeared I also left the scene of the foregoing
incident. I had a fancy to visit the little restaurant where I had been
taken ill, and after some trouble I found it. The door stood open. I
saw the fat landlord, Pietro, polishing his glasses as though he had
never left off; and there in the same corner was the very wooden bench
on which I had lain--where I had--as was generally supposed--died. I
stepped in. The landlord looked up and bade me good-day. I returned his
salutation, and ordered some coffee and rolls of bread. Seating myself
carelessly at one of the little tables I turned over the newspaper,
while he bustled about in haste to serve me. As he dusted and rubbed up
a cup and saucer for my use, he said, briskly,

"You have had a long voyage, amico? And successful fishing?"

For a moment I was confused and knew not what to answer, but gathering
my wits together I smiled and answered readily in the affirmative.

"And you?" I said, gayly. "How goes the cholera?"

The landlord shook his head dolefully.

"Holy Joseph! do not speak of it. The people die like flies in a
honey-pot. Only yesterday--body of Bacchus!--who would have thought it?"

And he sighed deeply as he poured out the steaming coffee, and shook
his head more sorrowfully than before.

"Why, what happened yesterday?" I asked, though I knew perfectly well
what he was going to say; "I am a stranger in Naples, and empty of
news."

The perspiring Pietro laid a fat thumb on the marble top of the table,
and with it traced a pattern meditatively.

"You never heard of the rich Count Romani?" he inquired.

I made a sign in the negative, and bent my face over my coffee-cup.

"Ah, well!" he went on with a half groan, "it does not matter--there is
no Count Romani any more. It is all gone--finished! But he was rich--as
rich as the king, they say--yet see how low the saints brought him! Fra
Cipriano of the Benedictines carried him in here yesterday morning--he
was struck by the plague--in five hours he was dead," here the landlord
caught a mosquito and killed it--"ah! as dead as that zinzara! Yes, he
lay dead on that very wooden bench opposite to you. They buried him
before sunset. It is like a bad dream!"

I affected to be de