“Of course,” returned the Prince, politely, “you have had many occasions of ascertaining that.”

Giovanni, the innkeeper, returned with a bottle of wine and three glasses, which he placed upon the table, and proceeded to fill.

“By the by,” said the Prince, “in the excitement I forgot to inquire for your Signora.  She is well, I hope?”

“Thank you—­she is very well,” replied Giovanni, shortly.

“A boy, I have no doubt?”

“A splendid boy,” answered the curate.  “Sor Giovanni has a little girl, too.  He is a very happy man.”

“Your health,” said the innkeeper, holding up his glass to the light.

“And yours,” returned the Prince.

“And of all the Saracinesca family,” said the curate, sipping his wine slowly.  He rarely got a glass of old Lacrima, and he enjoyed it thoroughly.

“And now,” said the Prince, “I must be off.  Many thanks for your hospitality.  I shall always remember with pleasure the day when I met an unknown relation.”

“The Albergo di Napoli will not forget that Prince Saracinesca has been its guest,” replied Giovanni politely, a smile upon his thin lips.  He shook hands with both his guests, and ushered them out to the door with a courteous bow.  Before they had gone twenty yards in the street, the Prince looked back and caught a last glimpse of Giovanni’s towering figure, standing upon the steps with the bright light falling upon it from within.  He remembered that impression long.

At the door of his own inn he took leave of the good curate with many expressions of thanks, and with many invitations to the Palazzo Saracinesca, in case the old man ever visited Home.

“I have never seen Rome, your Excellency,” answered the priest, rather sadly.  “I am an old man—­I shall never see it now.”

So they parted, and the Prince had a solitary supper of pigeons and salad in the great dusky hall of the Locanda del Sole, while his horses were being got ready for the long night-journey.

The meeting and the whole clearing up of the curious difficulty had produced a profound impression upon the old Prince.  He had not the slightest doubt but that the story of the curate was perfectly accurate.  It was all so very probable, too.  In the wild times between 1806 and 1815 the last of the Neapolitan branch of the Saracinesca had disappeared, and the rich and powerful Roman princes of the name had been quite willing to believe the Marchesi di San Giacinto extinct.  They had not even troubled themselves to claim the title, for they possessed more than fifty of their own, and there was no chance of recovering the San Giacinto estate, already mortgaged, and more than half squandered at the time of the confiscation.  That the rough soldier of fortune should have hidden himself in his native country after the return of Ferdinand, his lawful king, against whom he had fought, was natural enough; as it was also natural that, with his rough nature, he should accommodate himself to a peasant’s life, and marry a peasant’s only daughter, with her broad acres of orange and olive and vine land; for peasants in the far south were often rich, and their daughters were generally beautiful—­a very different race from the starved tenants of the Roman Campagna.