‘Then come this way,’ said the count; and he led him into a large hall, round which were hung many portraits in frames. ‘Do you see one among these portraits that at all resembles him?’ he said, when he had given him time to look round the walls.
‘Yes, that is he!’ said the poor man, unhesitatingly, pointing to the portrait of the count’s father, from whom he had inherited such great wealth, and for whom he had never given the alms of a single mass.
‘Then there is no doubt it was himself,’ said the count. ‘In this letter he tells me that you of your poverty have done for him what I with all my wealth have never done,’ he added in a tone of compunction. ‘For you have given alms for the repose of his soul, which I never have; therefore he bids me now take you and all your family into the palace to live with me, and to share all I have with you.’
After that he made the man and all his family come to live in the palace, as his father directed, and he was abundantly provided for the rest of his life.
[‘I know one of that kind,’ interposed one sitting by. ‘Will you hear it? But mine is true, mine is a real fact, and happened no longer ago than last October;’ and he told me the very names and address of the people concerned with the greatest particularity; this was in January 1873.]
[1] ‘La Lettera del Morto.’ [↑]
[2] ‘Bussola,’ a box for alms, &c. [↑]
[3] ‘Painone,’ ‘Paino’; a sneering way of naming a well-dressed person. ‘Painone,’ augmentative of the same. [↑]
[4] ‘Sua Eccellenza.’ The cant form of address of the Roman beggar. [↑]