“I made sure that you were dying, and for myself I was past caring; so I thanked him and told him to do with us as he thought best.  He and Messer’ Badcock carried you out then, and I followed.  The building was of two floors, with a door to each.  A flight of steps led from the lane to the upper door, which was padlocked; and no one had used that way for twenty years, or so the landlord said.  We entered by the lower door, which was broken—­both hasp and hinge—­ and led straight from the lane into a dirty cellar, worse than any cowshed and paved with mud.  But from this a ladder rested against the wooden ceiling, and just above it was a plank that had worked loose.  Messer’ Fazio slipped the plank aside, and with great pains we carried you up through the opening and into the loft.  I had bandaged your head so that we left no traces of blood in the lane or on the floor below.  Then Messer’ Fazio gathered up some onions which were strewn on the floor—­I believe he had been drying them there on the sly—­and took leave of us in a hurry.  When he reached the bottom again, he carried away the ladder, declaring that it belonged to him.

“I had brought with me but a loaf of bread, a flask of milk, and one thing else—­I will tell you what that was, by-and-by.  I sat by you, waiting for you to die.  When morning came I forced you to drink some of the milk.  The loft was bitterly cold, and I wondered indeed that you were not dead.

“Towards evening I felt faint with hunger, and was gnawing a piece of my loaf, when a voice spoke up to me from below.  It was a woman’s voice, and I took it at first for Lauretta’s—­she was the girl, you remember, who played the confidante’s part and such-like.  But when I pulled the plank a little aside and looked down, I saw a girl unknown to me—­until I recognized her for one of those who lived above the archway at the entrance of Messer’ Fazio’s court.  Lauretta had told her, swearing her to be secret, and she was here in pity.  She called herself Gioconda; and I bless her, for your sake.

“She fetched me bread, milk, and a little wine.  But for her—­for Messer’ Fazio came never near us, and the actors, she told me, had decamped—­we should both have perished.  The cold lasted for ten days; I cannot tell how you endured it; but at the end of them I hoped you might recover, and with that I tried to think of some plan for escaping from Genoa.  The worst was, I had no money. . . .”

The Princess paused, and shivered a little.

“That cold . . . it is in my bones yet.  I feel as though the least touch of it now would kill me . . . and I want to live.  Ah, my love, turn your eyes from me while I tell you what next I did!  The crown . . . it belonged to Corsica.  I had denied your right to it; but you had won it back from dishonour, and I remembered that in the band of it were jewels, the price of which might save you.  Moreover, the little that kept us from starving