For a moment I was confused and knew not what to answer, but gathering my wits together I smiled and answered readily in the affirmative.
"And you?" I said, gayly. "How goes the cholera?"
The landlord shook his head dolefully.
"Holy Joseph! do not speak of it. The people die like flies in a honey-pot. Only yesterday--body of Bacchus!--who would have thought it?"
And he sighed deeply as he poured out the steaming coffee, and shook his head more sorrowfully than before.
"Why, what happened yesterday?" I asked, though I knew perfectly well what he was going to say; "I am a stranger in Naples, and empty of news."
The perspiring Pietro laid a fat thumb on the marble top of the table, and with it traced a pattern meditatively.
"You never heard of the rich Count Romani?" he inquired.
I made a sign in the negative, and bent my face over my coffee-cup.
"Ah, well!" he went on with a half groan, "it does not matter--there is no Count Romani any more. It is all gone--finished! But he was rich--as rich as the king, they say--yet see how low the saints brought him! Fra Cipriano of the Benedictines carried him in here yesterday morning--he was struck by the plague--in five hours he was dead," here the landlord caught a mosquito and killed it--"ah! as dead as that zinzara! Yes, he lay dead on that very wooden bench opposite to you. They buried him before sunset. It is like a bad dream!"
I affected to be deeply engrossed with the cutting and Spreading of my roll and butter.
"I see nothing particular about it," I said, indifferently. "That he was rich is nothing--rich and poor must die alike."
"And that is true, very true," assented Pietro, with another groan, "for not all his property could save the blessed Cipriano."
I started, but quickly controlled myself.
"What do you mean?" I asked, as carelessly as I could. "Are you talking of some saint?"
"Well, if he were not canonized he deserves to be," replied the landlord; "I speak of the holy Benedictine father who brought hither the Count Romani in a dying condition. Ah I little he knew how soon the good God would call him himself!"
I felt a sickening sensation at my heart.
"Is he dead?" I exclaimed.
"Dead as the martyrs!" answered Pietro. "He caught the plague, I suppose, from the count, for he was bending over him to the last. Ay, and he sprinkled holy water over the corpse, and laid his own crucifix upon it in the coffin. Then up he went to the Villa Romani, taking with him the count's trinkets, his watch, ring, and cigar-case--and nothing would satisfy him but that he should deliver them himself to the young contessa, telling her how her husband died."