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“Jaqui now thought his troubles were over; but he was mistaken. A new persecutor appeared, who belonged to a fourth class, fortunately not a very large one. This person was a young man who was not only a fool but a poet.”

“Unfortunate creature!” exclaimed the Mistress of the House.

“I don’t know, madam,” said John Gayther. “He was very happy. It was the people with whom he associated in this world who were unfortunate. This young man, whose name was Florino, lived in Milan, and it would have been much better for Jaqui if he had lived in Patagonia. By great bad luck he had overheard one of the scientists who had visited Jaqui talking about what he had seen at his house, and the poet instantly became greatly interested in the story. He plied the learned man with all manner of questions, and very soon made up his mind that he would go to Florence to see the lady in the box. He believed she would make a most admirable subject for a poem from his pen.

“When Florino presented himself to Jaqui he came as the general of an army who settles down before a town to invest it and capture it, if he shall live long enough. At first Jaqui tried to turn him away in the usual manner; but the poet was not to be turned away. He had no feelings which could be hurt, and Jaqui was afraid to hurt his body on account of the police. The young man begged, he argued, he insisted, he persisted. All he wanted was to see, just once, the face of the beautiful lady who had been so wonderfully preserved. He visited the unfortunate Jaqui by day and by night; and at last, when Florino solemnly promised that if he should be given one opportunity of seeing the lady he would go away and never trouble Dr. Jaqui any more, the latter concluded that to agree to this proposition would be the best way to get rid of the youth, and so consented to allow him to gaze upon the face which forty years before had been animated by the soul of Donna Paltravi.

“When the upper part of the lid of the box had been removed and the face of the lady appeared under the plate of glass, the soul of the young poet who tremblingly bent over it was filled with rapturous delight. Never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful, and, more than this, he declared he had never dreamed of features so lovely. For a time it interested Jaqui to listen to the rhapsodies and observe the exaltation of the fool-poet, but he soon had enough of this amorous insanity, and prepared to close the box. Then Florino burst into wild entreaties–only ten minutes more, five minutes, three minutes, anything! So it went on until the poet had been feasting his eyes on the lady for nearly half an hour. Then Jaqui forcibly put him out of the room, closed the box, and locked the door.

“Florino had no more idea of keeping his word than he had of becoming a blacksmith. He persecuted Jaqui more than he had before, and when his solicitations to see the lady again were refused he went so far as to attempt to climb up to her window. Of course Jaqui could have called in the aid of the police, but it would have made it very unpleasant for him to bring the whole affair into court, and Florino knew this as well as he did. After a short time the poet tried a new line of tactics, and endeavored to persuade Jaqui that it was his duty to revive the lady; when this idea once got well into the head of the young man he became a worse lunatic than before. Jaqui attempted to reason with him; but Florino would listen to nothing he had to say, and went on being a fool, and a poet, and a lover, at the same time; and Jaqui began to be afraid that some day he would get into the room by foul means, break open the box, seize upon the sealed parchment which lay under the lid, and try to revive the lady himself.