"And what became of the girl?" I asked.
"Oh, SHE! She laughs all day long, as I told you. She has a new lover every week. What should SHE care?"
I drew out my purse. "I will take this suit," I said. "You ask four francs, here are six, but for the extra two you must show me some private corner where I can dress."
"Yes, yes. But certainly!" and the old fellow trembled all over with avaricious eagerness as I counted the silver pieces into his withered palm. "Anything to oblige a generous stranger! There is the place I sleep in; it is not much, but there is a mirror--HER mirror--the only thing I keep of hers; come this way, come this way!"
And stumbling hastily along, almost falling over the disordered bundles of clothing that lay about in all directions, he opened a little door that seemed to be cut in the wall, and led me into a kind of close cupboard, smelling most vilely, and furnished with a miserable pallet bed and one broken chair. A small square pane of glass admitted light enough to see all that there was to be seen, and close to this extemporized window hung the mirror alluded to, a beautiful thing set in silver of antique workmanship, the costliness of which I at once recognized, though into the glass itself I dared not for the moment look. The old man showed me with some pride that the door to this narrow den of his locked from within.
"I made the lock and key, and fitted it all myself," he said. "Look how neat and strong! Yes; I was clever once at all that work--it was my trade--till that morning when I found her with the singer from Venice; then I forgot all I used to know--it went away somehow, I could never understand why. Here is the fisherman's suit; you can take your time to put it on; fasten the door; the room is at your service."
And he nodded several times in a manner that was meant to be friendly, and left me. I followed his advice at once and locked myself in. Then I stepped steadily to the mirror hanging on the wall, and looked at my own reflection. A bitter pang shot through me. The dealer's sight was good, he had said truly. I was old! If twenty years of suffering had passed over my head, they could hardly have changed me more terribly. My illness had thinned my face and marked it with deep lines of pain; my eyes had retreated far back into my head, while a certain wildness of expression in them bore witness to the terrors I had suffered in the vault, and to crown all, my hair was indeed perfectly white. I understood now the alarm of the man who had sold me grapes on the highway that morning; my appearance was strange enough to startle any one. Indeed, I scarcely recognized myself. Would my wife, would Guido recognize me? Almost I doubted it. This thought was so painful to me that the tears sprung to my eyes. I brushed them away in haste.