k hands with both his guests, and ushered them out to the door with a
courteous bow. Before they had gone twenty yards in the street, the
Prince looked back and caught a last glimpse of Giovanni's towering
figure, standing upon the steps with the bright light falling upon it
from within. He remembered that impression long.

At the door of his own inn he took leave of the good curate with many
expressions of thanks, and with many invitations to the Palazzo
Saracinesca, in case the old man ever visited Home.

"I have never seen Rome, your Excellency," answered the priest, rather
sadly. "I am an old man--I shall never see it now."

So they parted, and the Prince had a solitary supper of pigeons and salad
in the great dusky hall of the Locanda del Sole, while his horses were
being got ready for the long night-journey.

The meeting and the whole clearing up of the curious difficulty had
produced a profound impression upon the old Prince. He had not the
slightest doubt but that the story of the curate was perfectly accurate.
It was all so very probable, too. In the wild times between 1806 and
1815 the last of the Neapolitan branch of the Saracinesca had
disappeared, and the rich and powerful Roman princes of the name had been
quite willing to believe the Marchesi di San Giacinto extinct. They had
not even troubled themselves to claim the title, for they possessed more
than fifty of their own, and there was no chance of recovering the San
Giacinto estate, already mortgaged, and more than half squandered at the
time of the confiscation. That the rough soldier of fortune should have
hidden himself in his native country after the return of Ferdinand, his
lawful king, against whom he had fought, was natural enough; as it was
also natural that, with his rough nature, he should accommodate himself
to a peasant's life, and marry a peasant's only daughter, with her
broad acres of orange and olive and vine land; for peasants in the far
south were often rich, and their daughters were generally beautiful--a
very different race from the starved tenants of the Roman Campagna.

The Prince decided that the story was perfectly true, and he reflected
somewhat bitterly that unless his son had heirs after him, this herculean
innkeeper of Aquila was the lawful successor to his own title, and to all
the Saracinesca lands. He determined that Giovanni's marriage should not
be delayed another day, and with his usual impetuosity he hastened back
t