_Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus._ So engrossed was Don Egidio that for some moments I stood behind him unobserved; and when he rose and faced me, grief had left so little room for any minor emotion that he looked at me almost without surprise. “Don Egidio,” I said, “I have a carriage waiting for you at the gate. You must come home with me.” He nodded quietly and I drew his hand through my arm. He turned back to the grave. “One moment, my son,” he said. “It may be for the last time.” He stood motionless, his eyes on the heaped-up flowers which were already bruised and blackened by the cold. “To leave him alone--after sixty years! But God is everywhere--“ he murmured as I led him away. On the journey home he did not care to talk, and my chief concern was to keep him wrapped in my greatcoat and to see that his bed was made ready as soon as I had restored him to his lodgings. The _levatrice_ brought a quilted coverlet from her own room and hovered over him as gently as though he had been of the sex to require her services; while Agostino, at my summons, appeared with a bowl of hot soup that was heralded down the street by a reviving waft of garlic. To these ministrations I left the _parocco_, intending to call for news of him the next evening; but an unexpected pressure of work kept me late at my desk, and the following day some fresh obstacle delayed me. On the third afternoon, as I was leaving the office, an agate-eyed infant from the Point hailed me with a message from the doctor. The _parocco_ was worse and had asked for me. I jumped into the nearest car and ten minutes later was running up the doctor’s greasy stairs. To my dismay I found Don Egidio’s room cold and untenanted; but I was reassured a moment later by the appearance of the _levatrice_, who announced that she had transferred the blessed man to her own apartment, where he could have the sunlight and a good bed to lie in. There in fact he lay, weak but smiling, in a setting which contrasted oddly enough with his own monastic surroundings: a cheerful grimy room, hung with anecdotic chromos, photographs of lady-patients proudly presenting their offspring to the camera, and innumerable Neapolitan _santolini_ decked out with shrivelled palm-leaves. The _levatrice_ whispered that the good man had the pleurisy, and that, as she phrased it, he was nearing his last mile-stone. I saw that he was in fact in a bad way, but his condition did not indicate any pressing danger, and I had the presentiment that he would still, as the saying is, put up a good fight. It was clear, however, that he knew what turn the conflict must take, and the solemnity with which he welcomed me showed that my summons was a part of that spiritual strategy with which the Catholic opposes the surprise of death.