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66 "Thunder!" exclaimed the other, stifling a laugh; and he came forward.

"It is nothing, nothing at all, you know, my son," said he with sudden good nature. "Give me a pinch. It is nothing," he continued, taking the snuff. "These are things that can be remedied. The Countess Carlotta has made so much wine that, as I say, for her a few casks more, a few casks less . . . You understand me! She is a good woman, my son, the Countess Carlotta; a good woman."

"Yes, good, good," mumbled Don Rocco, looking into his snuff-box.

"You are a lucky man, my dear," continued Marin, slapping him on the shoulder. "You are as well off here as the Pope."

"I am satisfied, I am satisfied," said Don Rocco, smiling and smoothing out his brows for a moment. It pleased him to hear these words from an intimate friend of the Countess Carlotta.

The professor gazed around admiringly as if he saw the place for the first time. "It is a paradise!" said he, letting his eyes pass along the dirty walls of the courtyard and then raising them to the fig tree picturesquely hidden under the bell-tower in the high corner between the gateway and the old convent.

"Only for that fig tree!" he added. "Is it not a beauty? Does it not express the poetry of the southern winter, tepid and quiet? It is like