By the side of a small bed, in a small room next to the larger one of which I have already spoken in noticing the usual arrangements of a contadino's house, sat our friend Antonio, nearly an hour after his meeting with Giovanozzo. The same man who, some time before, had lain upon the table in the adjoining chamber now occupied the bed; but he was apparently sound asleep. The contadino's Xantippe had informed her husband, or rather Antonio, for whom she entertained much higher veneration, that the "poor soul," as she called Buondoni's retainer, had awoke and spoken quite cheerfully, but that he had now fallen into a more refreshing kind of slumber; and anxious to busy herself about her household affairs, she had willingly left her patient to Antonio's care, upon being assured that they were old companions. Antonio, as the reader may have remarked, had that curious habit, common to both sages and simpletons, of occasionally giving vent to his thoughts in words, even when there was no one to listen to them--not in low tones, indeed, but in low-muttered murmurs--not in regular and unbroken soliloquy, but in fragments of sentences, with lapses of silent meditation between. "It is Mardocchi," he said; "it is Mardocchi beyond all doubt. Mightily changed, indeed, he is--but that scar cutting through the eyebrow. I remember giving him the wound that made it with the palla." He fell into silence again for a few minutes, and then he murmured, "We used to say he would be hanged. So he has fulfilled his destiny, and got off better than most men in similar circumstances." Here came another break, during which the stream of thought ran on still; and then he said, "Now let any one tell me whether it was better for this man to be brought to life again or not. His troubles in this life were all over, he had taken the last hard gasp; the agony, and the expectation, and the fear were all done and over, and now they have all to come over again, probably in the very same way too, for he is certain to get into more mischief, and deserve more hanging, and take a better hold of Purgatory, even if he do not go farther still. He never had but one good quality; he would keep his word with you for good or ill against the devil himself. He had a mighty stubborn will, and once he had said a thing he would do it."