And she hurried home, weeping, ah! so bitterly. For Zita knew her duty towards her neighbour as the road towards Heaven. She knew that there were times for all things, and that she had prayed too much and too long. Punishment she did not so much dread as the reproaches of her own conscience for the neglect of her duty. At length, faltering and stumbling in the momentarily increasing darkness, she reached the Pomponian house, which was all lighted up from top to bottom. “Ah!” thought she, “the major domo has, at least, attended to his business.” She hurried into a small side court-yard where the kitchen was, and there she found all her army of assistants: the cook’s mates, the scullions, the marmitons, the plate-scrapers, and the bottle-washers, all fast asleep, with their ladles, their knives, and their spits on benches and door-steps and in corners. “Ah!” cried little Zita, wringing her hands; “waiting for me, and quite worn out with fatigue!” Then, stepping among them without awakening them, she approached the great folding-doors of the kitchen, and tried the handle; but the doors were locked, and through the keyholes and hinges, the chinks and crannies of the portal, there came a rich, powerful, subtle odour, as of the best dinner that ever was cooked. She thought she understood it all. Enraged at her absence, her master had sent for Maravilla, the corpulent female cook of Septimus Pylorus, his neighbour, to prepare the dinner, or, perhaps, the great P. Maremnius Citronius Ostendius had himself condescended to assume the cook’s cap and apron, and was at that moment engaged within, with locked doors, in blasting her professional reputation for ever. She was ruined as a cook, a servant--a poor little fatherless girl, with nought but her virtue and her cookery for a dower. Unhappy little Zita! She ran back, through the court-yard to the great banquetting saloon, and there, lo, she found the table decked, and the soft couches ranged, the flowers festooned, the rich tapestries hanging, and the perfumes burning in golden censers. And there, too, she found the proud Domina Pomponia, in gala raiment, who greeted her with a smile of unwonted benevolence, saying: “Now, Zita, the guests are quite ready for the banquet; and I am sure, from the odour which we can smell even here, that it will be the very best dinner that ever was cooked.” Then came from an inner chamber the fruity port-wine voice of Ostendius, crying,