The people die like flies in a honey-pot.

Only yesterday--body of Bacchus!--who would have thought it ?" And he sighed deeply as he poured out the steaming coffee, and shook his head more sorrowfully than before.
"Why, what happened yesterday ?" I asked, though I knew perfectly well what he was going to say; "I am a stranger in Naples, and empty of news." The perspiring Pietro laid a fat thumb on the marble top of the table, and with it traced a pattern meditatively.
"You never heard of the rich Count Romani ?" he inquired.
I made a sign in the negative, and bent my face over my coffee-cup.
"Ah, well!" he went on with a half groan, "it does not matter--there is no Count Romani any more.

It is all gone--finished! But he was rich--as rich as the king, they say--yet see how low the saints brought him! Fra Cipriano of the Benedictines carried him in here yesterday morning--he was struck by the plague--in five hours he was dead," here the landlord caught a mosquito and killed it--"ah! as dead as that zinzara! Yes, he lay dead on that very wooden bench opposite to you.

They buried him before sunset.

It is like a bad dream!" I affected to be deeply engrossed with the cutting and Spreading of my roll and butter.
"I see nothing particular about it," I said, indifferently.