iting for Pierre, who, moreover, always went
in by the little door in the side lane.

"Good-bye, Abbe," exclaimed Prada.

"Good-bye, Count, a thousand thanks," was Santobono's response.

Then the two others stood watching him as he went towards the Boccanera
mansion, whose old, monumental entrance, full of gloom, was still wide
open. For a moment they saw his tall, rugged figure erect against that
gloom. Then in he plunged, he and his little basket, bearing Destiny.

XII.

IT was ten o'clock when Pierre and Narcisse, after dining at the Caffe di
Roma, where they had long lingered chatting, at last walked down the
Corso towards the Palazzo Buongiovanni. They had the greatest difficulty
to reach its entrance, for carriages were coming up in serried files, and
the inquisitive crowd of on-lookers, who pressed even into the roadway,
in spite of the injunctions of the police, was growing so compact that
even the horses could no longer approach. The ten lofty windows on the
first floor of the long monumental facade shone with an intense white
radiance, the radiance of electric lamps, which illumined the street like
sunshine, spreading over the equipages aground in that human sea, whose
billows of eager, excited faces rolled to and fro amidst an extraordinary
tumult.

And in all this there was not merely the usual curiosity to see uniforms
go by and ladies in rich attire alight from their carriages, for Pierre
soon gathered from what he heard that the crowd had come to witness the
arrival of the King and Queen, who had promised to appear at the ball
given by Prince Buongiovanni, in celebration of the betrothal of his
daughter Celia to Lieutenant Attilio Sacco, the son of one of his
Majesty's ministers. Moreover, people were enraptured with this marriage,
the happy ending of a love story which had impassioned the whole city: to
begin with, love at first sight, with the suddenness of a
lightning-flash, and then stubborn fidelity triumphing over all
obstacles, amidst romantic circumstances whose story sped from lip to
lip, moistening every eye and stirring every heart.

It was this story that Narcisse had related at dessert to Pierre, who
already knew some portion of it. People asserted that if the Prince had
ended by yielding after a final terrible scene, it was only from fear of
seeing Celia elope from the palace with her lover. She did not threaten
to do so, but, amidst her virginal calmness, there was so much cont