air.

"Are you the owner of this place?" I asked.

"Si, signor!"

"What has become of the old man who used to live here?"

He laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and drew his pipe-stem across his
throat with a significant gesture.

"So, signor!--with a sharp knife! He had a good deal of blood, too, for
so withered a body. To kill himself in that fashion was stupid: he
spoiled an Indian shawl that was on his bed, worth more than a thousand
francs. One would not have thought he had so much blood."

And the fellow put back his pipe in his mouth and smoked complacently.
I heard in sickened silence.

"He was mad, I suppose?" I said at last.

The long pipe was again withdrawn.

"Mad? Well, the people say so. I for one think he was very
reasonable--all except that matter of the shawl--he should have taken
that off his bed first. But he was wise enough to know that he was of
no use to anybody--he did the best he could! Did you know him, signor?"

"I gave him money once," I replied, evasively; then taking out a few
francs I handed them to this evil-eyed, furtive-looking son of Israel,
who received the gift with effusive gratitude.

"Thank you for your information," I said coldly. "Good-day."

"Good-day to you, signor," he replied, resuming his seat and watching
me curiously as I turned away.

I passed out of the wretched street feeling faint and giddy. The end of
the miserable rag-dealer been told to me briefly and brutally
enough--yet somehow I was moved to a sense of regret and pity. Abjectly
poor, half crazy, and utterly friendless, he had been a brother of mine
in the same bitterness and irrevocable sorrow. I wondered with a half
shudder--would my end be like his? When my vengeance was completed
should I grow shrunken, and old, and mad, and one lurid day draw a
sharp knife across my throat as a finish to my life's history? I walked
more rapidly to shake off the morbid fancies that thus insidiously
crept in on my brain; and as before, the noise and glitter of the
Toledo had been unbearable, so now I found it a relief and a
distraction. Two maskers bedizened in violet and gold whizzed past me
like a flash, one of them yelling a stale jest concerning la
nnamorata--a jest I scarcely heard, and certainly had no heart or wit
to reply to. A fair woman I knew leaned out of a gayly draped balcony
and dropped a bunch of roses at my feet; out of courtesy I stooped to
pick them up, and then raising my hat I saluted the dar