"Macché!" exclaimed her adviser, looking much shocked, "not he? A man of that instruction? No, to tell the truth—he is terribly stingy."
"So am I," Mariuccia replied, laughing with relief. "We shall get on well together."
"You are economical, Sora Mariuccia," Fra Tommaso looked at her approvingly, "but this poor Professor is truly avaricious. He is afraid even to eat enough, and is as thin as the miller's donkey that carries the grain and never gets any. One day some buffoon of a student stole his purse as he was entering the lecture-room—oh, he gave it back to him afterwards—but meanwhile the lecture had gone to little pieces—clean out of his head. When the young rascal handed him his purse back he nearly fainted, and they had to give him cognac before he could walk home."
"Poverino," Mariuccia cried indignantly, "it was a cruel joke! I am not afraid of this vice, as you call it. He will have to pay me my wages, and that is all that matters to me. I am indifferentissima as to victuals. By the way, what does he pay?"
"Ask for four scudi a month," Fra Tommaso commanded briskly. He had caught sight of a sunbeam that suddenly shot through the round window in the dome and lit, like a golden arrow, on the crown of the Addolorata. That meant noon in a moment—and his bells to ring. "You ask four, and he will give you three. Go to him to-day—Professor Carlo Bianchi, Palazzo Santafede—it is close by here, you know. You can go out at the back door of the church. Say I sent you. But no, no thanks—for me it is a pleasure to serve you, commara, at any time. Arrivederci!"
The report of a cannon rent the hot, still air, the midday gun from Castel Sant' Angelo. Instantly every church bell in Rome broke into peals of sound, echoing the announcement of high noon to the city. Fra Tommaso had leaped to his ropes and was working like a demon, trying to outring all the neighboring bells, and especially the one of Santa Eulalia, the convent on the other side of the river; between it and San Severino there was on this point an ancient rivalry which deafened all who lived near either.
Mariuccia departed well content, and at once made her way to the indicated address. The Palazzo Santafede was a huge pile belonging to the prince of that name, and running the whole length of the street which separated the Ripetta from a large quiet piazza, where five well-known palaces had faced each other in dignified seclusion for some centuries past, while many a tragedy and comedy had been played in the great rooms behind their tall, impenetrable walls. The Santafede residence stretched four-square round a vast sunny courtyard where a fountain bubbled in the center, and battered statues of more or less doubtful merit stood on pedestals under the deep colonnade which ran round three sides and afforded shelter for the prince's stables. The present prince was a very young man, with pronounced sporting tendencies, and beautiful English carriage horses and Irish hunters were groomed under the colonnade in the morning. The Princess Mother lived with her son on the "piano nobile," the first floor of the palace, in solemn and unchanging state. All the other apartments, there being no married sons to be housed, were let to tenants whose worldly importance diminished with each flight of stairs they climbed—monsignori, diplomatists, nobles who had no dwelling of their own in Rome paid high rents for spacious suites of rooms on second and third floors. Above these came modest apartments occupied by humbler individuals; and the vast attics, which a couple of centuries ago had accommodated four or five hundred retainers, were now let out, even in single rooms, to all who could satisfy the maestro di casa of their respectability.
The reigning family was away at this time of year and the porter was taking his ease in his shirt sleeves in the shade of the great doorway when Mariuccia marched in and inquired for Professor Bianchi.
"Third staircase to the right, fourth floor," was the reply. And as the inquirer went on under the colonnade, the porter remarked to his wife, who was sitting on the lodge steps nursing her baby, "I wager there goes another cook for Professor Scortica sassi (Skin-the-stones). I wonder how long she will stay?"
Mrs. Porter glanced after the receding figure. There was something impressive in that dragonlike stride; the brown hand gripped the thick umbrella as if it had been a saber. "She looks pretty resolute, that female," Mrs. Porter remarked. "I shouldn't wonder if he had found his match this time. I'd rather not be in her place, though."