“Will you please explain your extraordinary satisfaction at this news?” said Madame Mayer.  Between her late anger, her revived hopes, and her newly roused curiosity, she was in a terrible state of suspense.

“Explain?” he cried.  “Explain what, most adorable of women?  Does it not explain itself?  Have we not found the Marchese di San Giacinto, the real Saracinesca?  Is not that enough?”

“I do not understand—­”

Del Ferice was now by her side.  He seemed hardly able to control himself for joy.  As a matter of fact he was acting, and acting a desperate part too, suggested on the spur of the moment by the risk he ran of losing this woman and her fortune on the very eve of marriage.  Now he seized her hand, and drawing her arm through his, led her quickly backwards and forwards, talking fast and earnestly.  It would not do to hesitate, for by a moment’s appearance of uncertainty all would be lost.

“No; of course you cannot understand the vast importance of this discovery.  I must explain.  I must enter into historic details, and I am so much overcome by this extraordinary turn of fortune that I can hardly speak.  Remove all doubt from your mind, my dear lady, for we have already triumphed.  This innkeeper, this Giovanni Saracinesca, this Marchese di San Giacinto, is the lawful and right Prince Saracinesca, the head of the house—­”

“What!” screamed Donna Tullia, stopping short, and gripping his arm as in a vice.

“Indeed he is.  I suspected it when I first found the signature at Aquila; but the man was gone, with his newly married wife, no one knew whither; and I could not find him, search as I might.  He is now returned, and what is more, as this letter says, with all his papers proving his identity.  This is how the matter lies.  Listen, Tullia mia.  The old Leone Saracinesca who last bore the title of Marquis—­”

“The one mentioned here?” asked Donna Tullia, breathlessly.

“Yes—­the one who took service under Murat, under Napoleon.  Well, it is perfectly well known that he laid claim to the Roman title, and with perfect justice.  Two generations before that, there had been an amicable arrangement—­amicable, but totally illegal—­whereby the elder brother, who was an unmarried invalid, transferred the Roman estates to his younger brother, who was married and had children, and, in exchange, took the Neapolitan estates and title, which had just fallen back to the main branch by the death of a childless Marchese di San Giacinto.  Late in life this old recluse invalid married, contrary to all expectation—­certainly contrary to his own previous intentions.  However, a child was born—­a boy.  The old man found himself deprived by his own act of his principality, and the succession turned from his son to the son of his younger brother.  He began a negotiation for again obtaining possession of the Roman title—­at least so the family tradition goes—­but his