might be insulted by any odour of poverty, and she said coldly:
"And you wish me to believe that person is a brother of my highbred
husband? Impossible!"

After this the duchess permitted no one save old Nonna to look into the
glass; she, however, spent many hours each clay in following the
miserable experiences of her unfortunate child. Sometimes indeed it
seemed to her as if a little happiness were mixed with the misery of his
existence, and it also struck her that her little imp of a George was
gradually growing to be a tall, distinguished-looking man with a noble
forehead and flashing eyes, whereas Wendelin, despite his beauty and his
grey lock, had become fat and red in the face, and looked like a common
farmer.

Great was her solicitude for him, and her heart bled when she saw him
suffer, which was not seldom; but then, on the other hand, she often had
to laugh with him and be merry, when he gave himself up to the strange
illusion of being happy. And had she ever seen a face so beaming as his
was when one day, in a splendid hall, a stately grey-haired man in a long
gown embraced him and laid a laurel wreath on the design for a building,
at which she had seen George work. And then he seemed to have gone to
another country, and to be living in the midst of the direst poverty, yet
somehow the world must have been turned upside down, for he was as
lighthearted and gay as if Dame Fortune had poured the entire contents of
her cornucopia over him.

He lived in a little white-washed room, which was not even floored, but
only paved with common tiles. In the evening he ate nothing save a piece
of bread, with some goat-cheese and figs, and quenched his thirst with a
draught of muddy wine which he diluted with water. A squalid old woman
brought him this wretched supper, and it cut the duchess to the heart to
see him hunt about for coppers enough to pay for it. One day he seemed to
have exhausted his store, for he turned his purse upside down and shook
it, but not the smallest coin fell out.

This grieved her sorely, and she wept bitterly, thinking of the ease of
her other son, and resenting the injustice with which blind and cruel
Fortune had bestowed her gifts.

When she had dried her eyes sufficiently to be able to see the picture in
the mirror once more, she beheld a long low house by the side of which
there was a large space roofed over with lattice work. This was covered
by a luxuriant growth of fig-branches and gr