“You think of getting well yourself, brother Simone.  I have not got the fever yet,” said the monk, making an effort to control himself and speak in his ordinary manner.

“May the saints grant that your reverence do not fall ill before I am able to get up, or I don’t know what we should do.”

“It is years, brother Simone, that make my hand shake, more than ague this time, years, and many a former touch of the fever.  I am not ill this time yet.  And now I must go and ring the ‘Angelus.’”

And the old monk did go, and the “Angelus” was duly rung.  But Brother Simone, as he lay upon his fevered bed, was very well able to tell that the rope was pulled by a very uncertain and unsteady hand.  “Poor old fellow! he’s going fast!  I wonder whether there’s any chance of their moving me when he’s gone?” thought Brother Simone to himself.

But Father Fabiano, for his own part, judged that prayer and penance were more needed for the healing of his present disorder, than either bark or quinine.  And when he had rung the bell, he betook himself again to the altar of St. Apollinare, and with cowl drawn over his head, and frequent prostrations till his forehead touched the marble flags of the altar-step, spent before it most of the remaining hours of that day.  Nevertheless, it was true that, be the cause what it might, the aged friar was ill, not in mind only, but also in the body.  And before the hour of evensong came,—­his coadjutor, Fra Simone, the lay-brother, being by that time so much better as to be able to crawl out,—­Father Fabiano was fain to stretch himself on the pallet in his cell.  And Fra Simone took it quite as a matter of course in the ordinary order of things, that the father was laid up in his turn with an attack of fever and ague.

It was much about the same time that Father Fabiano had set out on that walk to the forest, from which he had returned in such a state of agitation, that old Quinto Lalli, the prima donna’s travelling companion, was made acquainted with the escapade of his adopted daughter.  Though she bore his name, the fact was that the old man was in no way related to the famous singer.  But they had lived together in the relationship first of teacher and pupil, and then of father and daughter, by mutual adoption ever since the first beginning of the singer’s public career; and they mutually represented to each other the only family ties which either of them knew or recognized in the world.  The old man had been several hours in bed, when Bianca had returned from the ball, at about five in the morning of that Ash Wednesday.  And it was not till he came from his room, between eight and nine, that he heard from Gigia, Bianca’s maid, that her mistress had not gone to bed, but had only changed her dress, and taken a cup of coffee before going out with the Marchese Ludovico more than an hour ago in a bagarino.

There was nothing sufficiently strange to the former habits of his adopted daughter in such an escapade, or so unlike to many another frolic of the brilliant Diva in former days, as to cause any very great surprise to the old singing-master—­for such had been the original vocation of Signor Lalli.  Yet he seemed on this occasion to be not a little annoyed at what she had done.