He shuffled to the front and bowed. Taking a key from his pocket he unlocked the iron gates, then planted himself on the threshold, and turned his ear toward the well-appointed brougham, and Count Nobili seated within.
"Do the ladies receive?" Nobili called out. The old man nodded, bringing his best ear and ferret eyes to bear upon him.
"Yes, the ladies do receive. Will the excellency descend?"
Count Nobili jumped out and hurried through the archway into a court surrounded by a colonnade.
It is very dark. The palace rises upward four lofty stories. Above is a square patch of sky, on which a star trembles. The court is full of damp, unwholesome odors. The foot slips upon the slimy pavement. Nobili stopped. The old man came limping after, buttoning his coat together.
"Ah! poor me!—The excellency is young!" He spoke in the odd, muffled voice, peculiar to the deaf. "The excellency goes so fast he will fall if he does not mind. Our court-yard is very damp; the stairs are old."
"Which is the way up-stairs?" Nobili asked, impatiently. "It is so dark I have forgotten the turn."
"Here, excellency—here to the right. By the Madonna there, in the niche, with the light before it. A thousand excuses! The excellency will excuse me, but I have not yet lit the lamp on the stairs. I was resting. There are so many visitors to the Signora Marchesa. The excellency will not tell the Signora Marchesa that it was dark upon the stairs? Per pieta!"
The shriveled old man placed himself full in Nobili's path, and held out his hands like claws entreatingly.
"A thousand devils!—no," was Nobili's irate reply, pushing him back.
"Let me go up; I shall say nothing. Cospetto! What is it to me?"