ness in others; and
Don Teodoro had always remembered his pupil as one of the few men to
whom he had been accustomed to speak freely of his hopes, and
sympathies, and aspirations, feeling sure of appreciation from a nature
at once refined and reticent, though itself hard to understand. For Don
Teodoro was, strange to say, painfully sensitive to ridicule, though in
all other respects a singularly brave man, morally and physically. As a
child or as a boy, he had been laughed at by his companions for his
extraordinary nose and his short sight; and he had never recovered from
the childish suffering thus inflicted upon him by thoughtless children.
The fear of being ridiculous had largely influenced him through life,
and had really contributed much towards deciding him to accept the cure
of the wild mountain town.

Bosio's almost solemn words, as his chin fell upon his breast, and he
clasped his hands before him, suddenly recalled to the priest the years
they had spent together, the confidence there had been between them, the
interest he had once felt in Bosio's fortune,--as an object once daily
familiar, and fresh once and not without beauty, then long hidden for
years, and coming suddenly to sight again, moth-eaten, dusty, and all
but destroyed, is oddly painful to him who used it long ago, and then
sees it when it is fit only to be thrown away.

"You are suffering," said Don Teodoro, leaning forward upon the marble
table and peering through his silver-rimmed spectacles into Bosio's pale
face, and gentle, exhausted eyes.

The priest's nervous, emaciated hand softly pressed the sleeve of the
younger man's coat, and the fantastic features grew wonderfully gentle
and kind. It was the transformation that came over them whenever any one
was visibly poor, or starving, or sorrowing, or hurt,--the change which
a beautiful passion brings to the ugliest face in the world.

Bosio smiled faintly as he saw it, and a little hope was breathed into
his heart, as though somewhere, at some immeasurable distance, there
might be a possibility of salvation from the ruin and wreck of his
horrible life.

"Yes," he said. "I am suffering. It is a great suffering. I do not think
that I can live much longer."

"Can I do nothing?" asked Don Teodoro.

Bosio still smiled, as a man smiles in torture when one speaks to him of
peace.

"If I believed that anything could be done," he said, "I should not
suffer as I do. I have lived a bad life, and