'He doesn't like the chemists and the bookbinders, eh?' asked the Prince.
'Ah, it was he who first brought them—to gratify your wife.'
'If they have turned him out, then, that is very well. Now, if only some one could turn them out!'
'Aspetta, aspetta! said the old woman.
'That is very good advice, but to follow it isn't amusing.' Then the Prince added, 'You alluded, just now, as to something particular, to quel giovane, the young artisan whom I met in the other house. Is he also estimable, or has he paid the penalty of his crimes?'
'He has paid the penalty, but I don't know of what. I have nothing bad to tell you of him, except that I think his star is on the wane.'
'Poverino!' the Prince exclaimed.
'That is exactly the manner in which I addressed him the first time I saw him. I didn't know how it would happen, but I felt that it would happen somehow. It has happened through his changing his opinions. He has now the same idea as you—ci vuol' pazienza.'
The Prince listened with the same expression of wounded eagerness, the same parted lips and excited eyes, to every added fact that dropped from Madame Grandoni's lips. 'That, at least, is more honest. Then he doesn't go to Chiffinch Street?'
'I don't know about Chiffinch Street; but it would be my impression that he doesn't go anywhere that Christina and the other one—the Scotchman—go together. But these are delicate matters,' the old woman pursued.
They seemed much to interest her interlocutor. 'Do
