"No, sir, his sitting-room. That is where he receives his colleagues in
Parliament, and his fellow-journalists, and his electors and printers
and so forth. Come in, sir."

The walls were covered with portraits of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth,
Lincoln, Washington, and Cromwell, and the room, which had been
furnished originally with chairs covered in chintz, was loaded with
incongruous furniture.

"Joseph, you've been naughty again! My little boy is all for being a
porter, sir. He has got the butt-end of his father's fishing-rod, you
see, and torn his handkerchief into shreds to make a tassel for his
mace." Then with a sweep of the arm, "All presents, sir. He gets
presents from all parts of the world. The piano is from England, but
nobody plays, so it is never opened; the books are from Germany, and the
bronze is from France, but the strangest thing of all, sir, is this."

"A phonograph?"

"It was most extraordinary. A week ago a cylinder came from the island
of Elba."

"Elba? From some prisoner, perhaps?"

"'A dying man's message,' Mr. Rossi called it. 'We must save up for an
instrument to reproduce it, Sister,' he said. But, look you, the very
next day the carriers brought the phonograph."

"And then he reproduced the message?"

"I don't know--I never asked. He often turns on a cylinder to amuse the
boy, but I never knew him try that one. This is the bedroom, sir; you
may come in."

It was a narrow room, very bright and lightsome, with its white
counterpane, white bed curtains, and white veil over the looking-glass
to keep it from the flies.

"How sweet!" said the stranger.

"It would be but for these," said the woman, and she pointed to the
other end of the room, where a desk stood between two windows, amid
heaps of unopened newspapers, which lay like fishes as they fall from
the herring net.

"I presume this is a present also?" said the stranger. He had taken from
the desk a dagger with a lapis-lazuli handle, and was trying its edge on
his finger-nail.

"Yes, sir, and he has turned it to account as a paper-knife. A
six-chamber revolver came yesterday, but he had no use for that, so he
threw it aside, and it lies under the newspapers."

"And who is this?" said the stranger. He was looking at a faded picture
in an ebony frame which hung by the side of the bed. It was the portrait
of an old man with a beautiful forehead and a patriarchal face.

"Some friend of Mr. Rossi's in England, I think."

"A