'Yes. Tell him so from me. And now, go back, Kyría, and thank you for your guidance and your lantern in those dark stairs.' 'How shall you pass the gate?' asked the captain's wife. She spoke anxiously, for Zeno was a handsome man, and she had seen how brave he was. 'I do not know,' he answered, 'but one of two things must happen.' 'What things?' 'Either I shall get out or I shall never see daylight again! I shall not let myself be taken alive to be impaled in the Hippodrome, I assure you. Thank you again, and good-night.' She drew back into the shadow of the tower door and watched the handsome young man with the peculiar half-motherly, half-sentimental anxiety of the middle-aged woman, who was a flirt in her youth and turned the heads of just such men, who knows that she is grown fat and ugly and can never turn the head of another, but who has preserved many tender and pleasant recollections of all the sex. Zeno did not walk straight towards the gate, though it was easily distinguished from the adjacent buildings by the greater number of its lights. He crossed the wide court diagonally to the right, in the direction of the stables, till he was near enough to see distinctly any one who chanced to come under the rays of one of the scattered lamps that burned here and there in doorways and open windows. Before long he saw a trooper of the guards emerging rather unsteadily out of the darkness into one of these small circles of light. Zeno could not help smiling to himself at the idea that there was hardly one sober man awake among the guards that night, and that they had all drunk themselves stupid with his money. He overtook the man in half-a-dozen strides, and spoke to him in a low voice. 'Hi! comrade! You who are still perfectly sober, help a friend who is very drunk!' The man stopped, steadied himself, and answered with ponderous gravity. 'Perfectly--hic--hic--sober!' 'I wish I were!' replied Zeno. 'The truth is, I am exceedingly drunk, though I do not show it. Wine only affects my brains, never my legs or my tongue. It is a very strange thing!' 'Very--cu--hic--rious!' responded the soldier, trying to see his interlocutor clearly, by screwing up his eyes. 'Extraordinarily cuhicrious, as you justly observe,' Zeno answered gravely. 'But the fact is----' 'Excuse me--hic,' interrupted the soldier. 'Are you one man--hic--or two men?' 'One man,' Zeno answered. 'Only one, and so drunk that I have quite forgotten the password.' 'Sec--hic--ret,' hiccoughed the man. 'Password secret,' he repeated, with a tremendous effort. 'Here is a gold piece, my dear friend. You will help a comrade in trouble.' The man took the money eagerly, and tried to put it into his wallet. To do so he had to bend his head down so as to see the thongs that fastened it. It took a long time to find them. 'Just give me the password before you do that,' Zeno said in a coaxing tone. 'Password?' The man looked up stupidly.