odes, with that wonderful facility which Nature has given to the Italian
_improvvisatore_ and denied to the rest of mankind. It has often been
remarked that the study of medicine goes hand in hand with a certain
boldness of speculation not altogether in harmony with the lessons of
the priest. No one who has lived in Italy long enough to get at the true
character of the people can have failed to observe this in Italian
physicians; and our doctor, like many of his brethren, was suspected of
carrying his speculations into forbidden fields. Still, his practice was
large, and went on increasing. Laymen, if they must needs be sick, were
glad to have him at their bedsides; and there were even men with purple
on their shoulders who had strong faith in his skill, if they had strong
doubts of his orthodoxy. Externally he conformed to the requirements of
the Church: heard mass of Sundays, and went once a year to the
confessional; for this much is a police regulation, a tax upon
conscience which every Roman is bound to pay. But he was too much behind
the scenes to do it with a good will, and saw professionally too much of
the daily life of the clergy, looked too freely and too closely at some
of their "pleasant vices," to feel much reverence either for them or for
their teachings.

Suddenly his chair, for he was professor in the medical college, was
taken from him: a warning, thought his friends, that unfriendly eyes
were upon him; and so, also, thought some of his patients, and called in
a new physician. Still his general practice continued large; and
although he found a little more time for his wife,--for a father to sit
in, in darkness and silence, and recall the sunny faces and sweet
prattle of his children. But he felt that unseen eyes might be watching
him even there, and that a sigh, though breathed never so softly, might
reach the ears of some who would rejoice in it and come all the more
confidently to the work they had resolved to do upon him. So, setting