He made no resistance, but suffered her to lead him upstairs. She unlocked the door, and they at once stood within the dreary, half-dismantled room. Closing the door behind them, she looked at him. She did not ask him how he did. There was no need for that. He was not at all well, as anyone could see. Signor Giuseppe was a broken man. The signs of that condition are well known, and easily to be recognised. They do not need to be recapitulated here. ‘Sit down,’ said Minna gently, ‘and tell me what has happened to you, and why you have never come to see me.’ ‘I have had a great misfortune,’ said Signor Giuseppe. ‘I have come into a fortune--not a large one, but enough, if it had come in time, to----’ He stopped abruptly. Minna, breathless, wondered if his troubles had really affected his mind. But there was no appearance about him of a disordered brain, only of a profoundly sad heart. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said. ‘Of course I should have come to see you before if this had not happened,’ he said. ‘It was very soon after I last saw you; in fact, only two or three days after. One day at the office I found some papers for me, which had been sent to one or two wrong addresses. I ought to have had them a week before--mark you, a week!’ he said in a louder voice, raising his hand and gesticulating a little. ‘I have told you, and you know all about it, that once I was different. I was not what I am now. I was a gentleman. I was not this broken-down old vagabond whom you have always known, and to whom you have still been kind. When I gave up my own estate, which was sufficient, though not large, and left my country, I left also others behind me--relations, connections. Amongst them, an uncle, my father’s brother, who was rather a singular old character. I will not trouble you with an account of him. He was an eccentric. He was a bachelor, something also of a miser, and very much of a curmudgeon. He lived alone on his property, and we saw little or nothing of him. When I went to say good-bye to him, and to tell him that I was going to fight for the freedom of my country, and for her unity, and that I was disposing of my property in order to be able the more effectually to help, he said: “Beppino mio, you are a complete and utter fool. Fight for your country as much as you please--young blood must have an outlet, and that is at least a respectable style of sowing your wild oats; but keep a whole suit of clothes in which to dress yourself when the battle is over, a chimney nook in which to rest and warm yourself, a fowl for the pot, a vine wherefrom to fill the vats, and a field of corn from which to provide bread for yourself. Otherwise you will find that, by the time your country is free, you yourself are a slave. You have never been accustomed to work for your livelihood. Take my word for it, your plan will not answer.” I was then twenty-two. I paid no heed to his words, but went my own way. You know the rest. Two months ago, I believe, I