The door opened, and a gray-headed old man entered, who approached him respectfully. "Well, Paolo?" said the cavalier, suddenly starting. "My Lord, the men are all going back to-night." "Let them go, then," said the cavalier, with an impatient movement. "I can follow in a day or two." "Ah, my Lord, if I might make so bold, why should you expose your person by staying longer? You may be recognized and"---- "No danger," said the other, hastily. "My Lord, you must forgive me, but I promised my dear lady, your mother, on her death-bed"---- "To be a constant plague to me," said the cavalier, with a vexed smile and an impatient movement; "but speak on, Paolo,--for when you once get anything on your mind, one may as well hear it first as last." "Well, then, my Lord, this girl,--I have made inquiries, and every one reports her most modest and pious,--the only grandchild of a poor old woman. Is it worthy of a great lord of an ancient house to bring her to shame?" "Who thinks of bringing her to shame? 'Lord of an ancient house'!" added the cavalier, laughing bitterly,--"a landless beggar, cast out of everything,--titles, estates, all! Am I, then, fallen so low that my wooing would disgrace a peasant-girl?" "My Lord, you cannot mean to woo a peasant-girl in any other way than one that would disgrace her,--one of the House of Sarelli, that goes back to the days of the old Roman Empire!" "And what of the 'House of Sarelli that goes back to the days of the old Roman Empire'? It is lying like weeds' roots uppermost in the burning sun. What is left to me but the mountains and my sword? No, I tell you, Paolo, Agostino Sarelli, cavalier of fortune, is not thinking of bringing disgrace on a pious and modest maiden, unless it would disgrace her to be his wife." "Now may the saints above help us! Why, my Lord, our house in days past has been allied to royal blood. I could tell you how Joachim VI."-- "Come, come, my good Paolo, spare me one of your chapters of genealogy. The fact is, my old boy, the world is all topsy-turvy, and the bottom is the top, and it isn't much matter what comes next. Here are shoals of noble families uprooted and lying round like those aloes that the gardener used to throw over the wall in spring-time; and there is that great boar of a Caesar Borgia turned in to batten and riot over our pleasant places." "Oh, my Lord," said the old serving-man, with a distressful movement, "we have fallen on evil times, to be sure, and they say his Holiness has excommunicated us. Anselmo heard that in Naples yesterday."