o feel his power as
something greater than he had suspected, when he came to spend the
autumn months in Subiaco, and hired Sora Nanna's guest room, with a
little room leading off it, which he kept locked, and in which he had a
table, a chair, a microscope, some books, a few chemicals and some
simple apparatus.

His presence had at first roused certain jealous misgivings in the heart
of the town physician, Sor Tommaso Taddei, commonly spoken of simply as
'the Doctor,' because there was no other. But Dalrymple was not without
tact and knowledge of human nature. He explained that he came as a
foreigner to learn from native physicians how malarious fevers were
treated in Italy; and he listened with patient intelligence to Sor
Tommaso's antiquated theories, and silently watched his still more
antiquated practice. And Sor Tommaso, like all people who think that
they know a vast deal, highly approved of Dalrymple's submissive
silence, and said that the young man was a marvel of modesty, and that
if he could stay about ten years in Subiaco and learn something from Sor
Tommaso himself, he might really some day be a fairly good
doctor,--which were extraordinarily liberal admissions on the part of
the old practitioner, and contributed largely towards reassuring
Stefanone concerning his lodger's character.

For Stefanone and his wife had their doubts and suspicions. Of course
they knew that all foreigners except Frenchmen and Austrians were
Protestants, and ate meat on fast days, and were under the most especial
protection of the devil, who fattened them in this world that they might
burn the better in the next. But Stefanone had never seen the real
foreigner at close quarters, and had not conceived it possible that any
living human being could devour so much half-cooked flesh in a day as
Dalrymple desired for his daily portion, paid for, and consumed.
Moreover, there was no man in Subiaco who could and did swallow such
portentous draughts of the strong mountain wine, without suffering any
apparent effects from his potations. Furthermore, also, Dalrymple did
strange things by day and night in the small laboratory he had arranged
next to his bedroom, and unholy and evil smells issued at times through
the cracks of the door, and penetrated from the bedroom to the stairs
outside, and were distinctly perceptible all over the house. Therefore
Stefanone maintained for a long time that his lodger was in league with
the powers of darknes