Page:Tales of Today.djvu/127

Rh to learn where the custodian of this mysterious dwelling might live.

"Not here," was the abrupt answer that I received.

My question seemed to be unwelcome to those whom 1 interrogated, and that only served to excite my curiosity still further. Keeping on from door to door, I wound up by entering a kind of dark cavern where there was an old woman who might have been suspected of being a witch, for she had a black cat and was cooking some indistinguishable mess in a kettle.

"You wish to see the house of Madame Lucrèce?" said she. "It is I who have the keys."

"Well, show it to me."

"Would you be wanting to hire it?" she asked, smiling with a rather doubtful air.

"Yes, if it suits me."

"It won't suit you. But come, will you give me a paul if I show it to you?"

"I shall be very glad to."

Upon this assurance she arose nimbly from her bench, took from its place on the wall a key that was quite covered with rust, and conducted me to the door of No. 13.

"Why," I asked her, "do they call this house the house of Lucrèce?"

The old woman replied with a sneer: "Why do they call you foreigner? Isn't it because you are a foreigner?"

"Very well; but who was this Madame Lucrèce? Was she a Roman lady?"

"What! You come to Rome and have never heard