nd ended by saying that although he could not just at that
moment exactly name the malady which Salvator was suffering from, he
would hit upon a name for it in a short time, and also the proper
remedies and treatment for its cure. He then took his departure with
the same amount of solemnity with which he had entered, leaving all
hands in the due condition of anxiety and alarm. He asked to see
Salvator's box downstairs, and Dame Caterina showed him a box, in which
were some old clothes of her deceased husband's, and some old boots and
shoes. He tapped the box with his hand here and there, saying, with a
smile, "We shall see! We shall see!" In an hour or two he came back
with a very grand name for what was the matter with Salvator, and
several large bottles of a potion with an evil smell, which he directed
that the patient should keep on swallowing. That was not such an easy
matter, for the patient resisted with might and main, and expressed, as
well as he could, his utter abhorrence of this stuff, which seemed to
be a brew from the very pit of Acheron. But whether it was that the
malady, now that it had got a name, exerted itself more powerfully, or
that Splendiano and medicine were working too energetically--enough,
with every day and nearly every hour, one might say, Salvator grew
weaker and weaker, so that, although Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni
asseverated that, the processes of life having come to a complete
standstill, he had given the machine an impetus towards renewed
activity (as if it had been the pendulum of a clock), all the
by-standers doubted of Salvator's recovery, and were disposed to think
that the Signor Dottore might, perhaps, have given the pendulum such a
rough impulse that it was put out of gear.

But one day it happened that Salvator, who seemed scarcely able to move
a muscle, suddenly got into a paroxysm of tremendous fever, and,
regaining strength in an instant, jumped out of bed, seized all the
bottles of medicine, and in a fury sent the whole collection flying out
of the window. Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni was just in the act to
come into the house to pay a visit, and, as Fate would have it, two or
three of the phials hit him on the head, and breaking, sent the brown
liquid within them flowing in dark streams over his face, his periwig,
and his neckerchief. The doctor sprang nimbly into the house, and
cried, like a man possessed, "Signor Salvator is off his head! Delirium
has evidently set in