Chapter I: HAVE read that there are no fairies in Italy, but I know better

Italy is full of them, and they are the most light-footed, friendly, impartial, democratic fairies in the world. They are liable to make friends with anybody. Like many Italians, they seem to live mostly on the foreign population. A number of them adopted me for a residence. Sometimes, when they were playful, they made me feel like a winter resort. They used to enjoy tobogganing down the slopes of my shoulders and digging their toes in the snow; they held games here and there on my person, which seemed to be well attended. I got a glimpse of one of them now and then, and we became acquainted with each other; and, while he was very shy, I am sure that he knew and liked me. I called him Oberon. He and his kin did me a great service, for they taught me why people move their arms and shrug their shoulders so much in Italy. Then, too, I always had company wherever I happened to be.

So when Betsey and the Norris ladies implored me to go with them to Mrs. Dorsey's palace and hear a prince lecture, I reported that I was engaged to play with the fairies, whereupon they concluded that I wanted the time for meditation and left me out of their plans. So it happened that I was, fortunately, alone with Norris when Forbes arrived, a full day ahead of his schedule.

The boy and I went out for a walk together. Before sailing he had spent two weeks coaching the ball-team of his college and was in fine form. His kindly blue eyes glowed with vitality and his skin was browned by the sunlight. As I looked at that tall, straight column of bone and muscle, with its broad shoulders and handsome head, I could not help saying: “If you were standing on a pedestal here in Rome there'd be a lot of gals in the gallery.”

“Before you say things like that you should teach me how to answer them with wit and modesty,” he said.

“Keep your eye on me and you'll learn all the arts of modesty,” I assured him. “And especially you will learn how to disarm suspicion when you are accused of wit.”

In a shaded walk of the Pincio Gardens he asked, “Is Gwendolyn looking well?”

“She's more beautiful than ever, and very well,” I said. “She will be disappointed when she finds you here.”

He stopped and faced me with a look of surprise, and asked:

“Do you think so?”

“I am sure of it, because she had planned to meet you with proper ceremony at the station and take you off to a real Roman luncheon. I am glad that you have come, for I have worked hard as your attorney and need a rest. I have had some fun with it, but I am delighted to turn the case over to you.”

He did not need a chart to understand me, for he said:

“You must tell me what progress you have made with it.”

“Well, I suppose you have read of the Count Carola.”

“Yes, and so has every one who knows Gwendolyn.”

“He is the plaintiff who seeks to establish the claim that he is a better man than you are. My defense has been so able that he has challenged me, and I have named the weapons; they are to be pitchforks--American pitchforks.”

Forbes laughed and remarked:

“You must take him for a bunch of hay.”

“June grass!” I answered. “We'll need some one to rake after, as we used to say on the farm, and I may ask you to be my second.”

“Does the count amount to much?”

“Not much; I have had him added up and his total properly audited.”

“How are the judge and jury?”

“The judge is in our favor; the jury is in doubt. Gwendolyn insists that you don't want to marry any one at present.”

“I want to, but I probably shall not,” he answered. “When I marry I want to have done something besides having just lived. It seems as if it were due my wife. Besides, when I get married I want to stay married; I don't want any girl to marry _me_ and give her heart to some other fellow. She must have time to be sure of one thing--that I am the right man. That cannot be proven with passionate vows or bouquets or guitar music, but only by sufficient acquaintance. On the other hand, I'd like to know, or think I know, that she is the right girl. If Gwendolyn really wants to marry a count it would be silly for me to try to convince her that I am the better fellow. She must see that for herself. If she doesn't, I should assume that she was right. God knows that I'm not so stuck on myself as to question her judgment. I'm very fond of her, but I have never let her suspect it.”

“If I were you I'd begin to arouse her suspicions.”

“That I propose to do, but delicately and without any guitar music. Love is a very sacred thing to me.”

“And the man who talks much about his love generally hasn't any,” I suggested.

“At least, if he has any love in him the cheapest way of showing it is by talk and song.”

“It's so awful easy to make words lie,” I agreed.

“If she wants me to enter a lying-match with these Romeos I'll agree, but only on condition that it's a lying-match--that we're only playing a game. I won't try to deceive her. Women are not fools or playthings any longer, are they?

“Generally not, if they're born in America,” I agreed.

Here was the modem American lover, and I must acknowledge that I fell in love with him. He stood for honest loving--a new type of chivalry--and against the lying, romantic twaddle which had come down from the feudal world. That kind of thing had been a proper accessory of courts and concubines. It would not do for America.

“I see that I am putting the case in good hands. Go in and win it,” I said.

“I'll make it my business while I'm here,” said he.

“You're a born business man. I know it's fashionable to hate the word 'business,' but I like it. In love it looks for dividends of happiness.”

“And I've observed that a home has got to pay or go out of business,” said he. “If Gwendolyn would put up with me I believe we could stand together to the end of the game.”

“I have some reason for saying that she is very fond of you,” I declared.

“I wouldn't dare ask you to explain, but you tempt me,” he said.

“A good-attorney never tells all he knows unless he is writing a book,” I answered.

We had come to the Spanish Stairs, where converging ways poured a thin, noisy fall of tourists and guide-books into the street below. I had seen the Stairs in my youth.

And I thought how many thousands

Of awe-encumbered men,

Each bearing his Hare and Baedeker,

Had passed the Stairs since then.

We made our way through crowded thoroughfares to the Pantheon and were in the thicket of vast columns when some one touched my arm. Who was this man with a blue monocle over his right eye, whose look was so familiar? Ah, to be sure, it was Muggs.

Again his mustache had disappeared, as had my hat and coat and the old suit of clothes, and how that blue monocle and the new attire and the smooth upper lip had changed the whole effect of Muggs! Evidently the man was prosperous and entering a new career. How does it happen that he has come in my way again, I asked myself, and then I remembered that he knew that I was to be there. What was I to expect now?--violence or----

He smiled.

“Charming day, isn't it?” he said, in his most agreeable tone.

He had neatly and deliberately removed his monocle as he spoke.

“Very! I suppose that stained-glass window of yours is a memorial to Wilton?”

He only smiled.

“As a European you're a great success,” I went on.

“Beginning a new life from the ground up,” said he, and added, with a glance at the great bronze doors, “Isn't this a wonderful place?”

“Yes, it was intended for a mammoth safe where reputations could be stored and embellished and kept, but it didn't work.”

“They cracked it and got away with the reputations,” said he, with a smile.

“Exactly! In my opinion every man should have his own private pantheon, and see that his reputation is as strong as the safe. It's the discrepancy that's dangerous. People won't allow a reputation to stay where it does not belong.”

He stepped closer and said, in a confidential tone, “I'm trying to improve mine, and I wish you would help me.”

“How?”

“Come to a little dinner that I am giving and say a good word for me when you can.”

“Are you trying to marry Mrs. Mullet?”

“Yes, I've fallen in love, and, as God's my witness, I'm living honest.”

“Muggs, I'll help you to get a reputation, but I won't help you to get a wife,” I said. “You must get the reputation first, and it will take you a long time. You'll have to try to pay back the money you've taken and keep it up long enough to prove your good faith.”

Muggs's plan was quite apparent. He wanted an all-around treaty of peace. He was still levying blackmail; the thing he demanded was not cash, but a character.

“That's exactly what I hope to do,” he explained. “I shall have all kinds of money, and I propose to square every account.”

“That's all right, provided Mrs. Mullet knows the whole plan and is willing to undertake the responsibility.”

He looked into my eyes, and said clearly in his smile: “You're the worst ass of a lawyer that I ever saw in my life. I've tried to be decent, and you've wiped your boots on me. Wait and see what happens now.”

All that seemed to be in his smile, but not a word of it passed his lips. He neatly adjusted the blue monocle and lifted his hat and said “Good afternoon,” and walked away.

I, too, had my smile, for I could not help thinking how this biter was being bitten, and how his old friends, the ghosts of the past, were now bearing down upon _him_.

We tramped to St. Peters, where squads of tourists seemed to be reading prayers out of red prayer-books and where a learned judge from Seattle, who had lost his pocket-book in a crowd near the statue of St. Peter, was delivering impassioned and highly prejudiced views of church and state to the members of his party.

We lunched at Latour's, where a long and limber-looking blond lady, who sat beside a Pomeranian poodle with a napkin tucked under his collar, consumed six cups of coffee and a foot and a half of cigarettes while we were eating. She was one of the most engaging ruins of the feudal world. What a theme for an artist was in the painted face and the sign of the dog! The head waiter told us that she was an American who had been studying art in Italy for years.

She ought to be mentioned in the guidebooks, I thought, as we were leaving.

We tramped miles to an old barracks of a building called the Cancellaria, which, according to Baedeker, was clothed in “majestic simplicity.”

“Baedeker is the Barnum of Europe,” I said, as we went on, “but he is generally more conservative.”

We arrived at the Grand Hotel a little before six. I went with Forbes to the Norris's apartments. Gwendolyn opened the door for us and greeted the young man with enthusiasm and led him to the parlor. Betsey was there, and we went at once to our own room.

“There's a new count in the game,” she remarked, as soon as we had sat down together--“the Count Raspagnetti, whom we met to-day at Mrs. Dorsey's. He's the grandest thing in Rome--six feet tall, with a monocle and a black beard, and is very good-looking. He's no down-at-the-heel aristocrat, either; has quite a fortune and two palaces in good repair, and has passed the guitar-and-balcony stage. He's about thirty-two, and seems to be very nice and sensible. Mrs. Dorsey calls him the dearest man in the world, and she has invited us to dinner to meet him again. It was a dead set for Gwendolyn, and the child was deeply impressed. It isn't surprising; these Italian men are most fascinating.”

“I suppose so,” I said, wearily. “The countless counts of Italy are getting on my nerves. Counts are a kind of bug that gets into the brains of women and feeds there until their heads are as empty as a worm-eaten chestnut.”

“Not at all,” said Betsey; “but if she must have a title--”

“She mustn't,” I said.

“You can't stop her.”

“That remains to be seen,” was my answer.

“Richard had better get a move on him,” said Betsey. “He can't dally along as you did.”

“Let him get his breath--he's only just landed.”

According to my custom I dined with Norris in his suite. Forbes went with the ladies to the dining-room.

“Aren't you about ready to go back?” I asked, as I thought of Muggs's smile.

“I should like to,” he said, “but the girls are having the time of their lives, and this air is making a new man of me. Then the young count seems to have let go; he doesn't annoy us any more. I'm hoping that Forbes will settle this count business.”

While we were eating a telegram was put in my hands which read as follows:

_I am stopping at the Bristol in Florence and must have your professional advice immediately._

_I cannot go to Rome, so will you kindly come here._

_I am in serious trouble. If I am not at hotel look for me third corridor of paintings, Uffizi Gallery. Please regard this as strictly confidential. M. Mullet._

I answered that she should look for me the next day, and said to Norris:

“I have to go to Florence to-morrow.”

“Take the car and your wife and the young people,” said he. “The roads are fine, and you'll enjoy it.”

I thanked him for the suggestion.

“There's one other thing,” said he. “If you think Forbes means business tell him at the first opportunity that I am an ex-convict, and let me know how he takes it. We must be fair to him.”

“Leave it to me.”

“We'll take them down to Naples with the motor-car soon,” said Norris. “Vesuvius is active again, and we must see her in eruption.” He did not suspect that another Vesuvius was beginning to quake beneath us, and I did not have the heart to speak of it. I hoped that I could serve as a shock-absorber in the new eruption and save him any worry.

X.--A DAY OF ADVENTURES WITH TUSCAN ARTISTS AND OTHERS

NEXT morning I found Betsey and the young people eager for the trip to Florence. Richard and I had breakfast together at eight-thirty.

“There's a new count in the game,” said he, as soon as we were seated together. “He came to our table last evening. He's a grand chap and in favor with the king, to whom he is going to present Gwendolyn and her mother. He knows how to talk to women, and I don't. I shall not be in it with him.”

“As to which is the best man it's her judgment, not yours, that's important,” I said. “So long as I am managing the case you must take nothing for granted. Put her on the witness-stand, and let's know what she has to say about it. Before that I must tell ye something--in confidence. Norris is about the best fellow that I ever knew, but he got into trouble when he was a boy. He was the victim of circumstances and went to prison--served a year.”

“I heard of that long ago,” said Forbes.

“What!” I exclaimed, in astonishment.

“Nobody cares anything about that. Everybody knows that he's a good man now--that is enough in America.”

“Do many know it?”

“Probably not. I have heard that even Gwendolyn and her mother do not know it.”

It surprised and in a way it pleased me to learn that I had told him what he already knew. I remembered that he had said, in his walk with me, that the distinguished editor who had got the tragic story from my lips was an uncle of his. So, after all, it was not strange that he should know.

“I presume that he had a wild youth, but he's a good man,” Forbes added.

That was all we said about it.

Our drive, which began at midday, took us through the loveliest vineyards in Italy. I shall never forget the vivid-green valley of the Arno as it looked that day. Lace-like vines spreading over the cresset tops of the olives and between them and filling the air with color; stately poplar rows and dark spires of cypress; distant purple mountain walls and white palaces on misty heights--they were some of the items. Here in these vineyards, and in others like them, are about the best tillers in the world--a simple, honest, beauty-loving people who are the soul of Italy, and, in the main, no country has a better asset.

On the road we met the Litchmans, of Chicago, touring with their yelling-machine and a special car trailing behind them filled with clothes and millinery.

That night we dined together and went to the opera. It was all Greek to me, but it was great! They woke me at one, and we went home. Next morning, having learned that Mrs. Mullet was not at her hotel, we all proceeded to the vast Uffizi Gallery. Grand place!

What a wonderful procession these people in marble and paint see every day in the parade of weary pilgrims, in the moving mosaic of humanity. What a Babel of tongues, all speaking Baedeker! I wonder if the gods, emperors, and painted masterpieces fully appreciate this endless human caravan. It is far more wonderful than they. Who are these people? Ask any of them, and he will be apt to tell you that the rest are fools; that almost every one of them is looking for conversational thunder and--knockers!

Some hurry.

“Two more galleries to see, and the train goes at five,” you hear one of them saying.

I was nearly bowled over and trampled upon by three German women who had lost their party.

Once these marble floors were almost exclusively the highway of the highbrows. Now the sacred children of the imagination are being introduced to a new crowd. Newness is its chief characteristic. Here are the overgrown multitude of the newly rich, the truly rich, and the untruly rich. Here are the newly married, the unmarried, the over-married, and the slightly married, and the well-married from all lands, some of them new recruits in the great army of art.

We passed through the Hall of the Ancient Imperial Shoats into the long corridor filled with statuary.

“The old gods seem to have had desperate battles before they gave up,” Betsey said to me. “Most of them lost either an arm or a leg in the war.”

“Many were beheaded and chucked into the garbage-barrels,” I answered. “The way Jupiter and Minerva were beaten up was a caution. It wasn't right; it wasn't decent. They were a harmless, inoffensive lot; they had never done anything to anybody. A lot of things were laid at their doors, but nothing was ever proved against 'em. These days we know enough to appreciate harmlessness.”

“They were very beautiful,” said Betsey, “but they're a crippled lot now.”

“Yes, most of them have artificial limbs,” I answered. “All they do now is to pose in vaudeville for the entertainment of humanity.” As we neared the room where I was to meet Mrs. Mullet we bade the young people go their way and look for us at the door about twelve-thirty.

We found the lady copying the portraits of our first parents. Her breast began to heave in a storm of emotion as she looked at us.

“Who are your friends?” I quickly asked, by way of diverting her thought.

“This is Adam and Eve,” said she, almost tearfully.

“I'm glad to see that they don't make company of us,” Betsey declared.

“They receive everybody in that same suit of clothes,” I answered. “And Eve's entertainment is so simple--apples right off the tree!”

“I don't see but that they look just as aristocratic as they would if they had sprung from poor but respectable parents,” said Betsey.

“Adam looks like a rather shiftless, good-natured young fellow, easily led, but, on the whole, I like them both,” was my answer. “They're frank and open and aboveboard. If you're looking for your first ancestors and must have them, I don't think you could do better. Certainly Mr. Darwin has nothing to offer that compares with them.”

Betsey and I had our little dialogues about many objects in our way, and now we had got Mrs. Mullet righted, so to speak, and on a firm working basis. She showed us through the gallery. I remember that she was particularly interested in the Botticelli paintings.

Mrs. Mullet said that she adored the Madonna--a case of compound adoration, for in its adoring group Botticelli succeeded in painting the most inhuman piety that the world has seen.

“Isn't that glorious?” Mrs. Mullet asked, as we stopped before his Venus--a tall lady standing on half a cockle-shell, neatly poised on breezy water.

“She has crooked feet,” said Betsey.

“Well, I guess yours would be crooked if you had been to sea on a cockle-shell,” I said, which will prove to the learned reader that we were about as ignorant of art as any in that hurrying crowd of misguided people.

“Oh, I think it's a wonderful thing! Look at the colors!” Mrs. Mullet exclaimed.

“But the toes are so long--they are rippling toes. Those on the right foot look as if they had just finished a difficult run on the piano,” Betsey insisted.

“She might be called the Long-toed Venus,” I suggested. “But she isn't to blame for that. I suppose she was born with that infirmity.”

So we crude and business-like Americans went on, as we flitted here and there, sipping the honey from each flower of art.

Twelve-thirty had arrived, and I suggested to Betsey that she should meet the young people and go with them wherever they pleased, and that they could find me at the hotel at four. She left us, and I asked Mrs. Mullet what I could do for her.

“I'm in perfectly awful trouble,” she sighed, with rising tears.

“Tell me all about it,” I said. “But please do not weep, or people will wonder what this cruel old man has been doing to you.”

“That man insisted that I should have my bust made and my portrait painted and agreed to pay for them, but now of course I shall have to pay for them myself. He has threatened to sue me for a hundred thousand dollars for breach of promise. It will take more than half my property.”

“Don't worry about the suit,” I said. “I'll agree to save you any cost in that matter. As to the bust, you can use it for a milestone in your history. The painting will show you how you looked when you were--not as wise as you are now. You can look at it and take warning.”

“I couldn't bear to look at them. I feel as if I never wanted to see myself again. I have written to everybody at home about this engagement. It's just perfectly dreadful!” Again she was near breaking down.

“You ought to be glad--not sorrowful,” I said. “That man can't even play a guitar. If he had a title or a fortune we wouldn't mind his being a scamp, but he hasn't. He hasn't even a coat of arms.”

“There! I'm not going to cry, after all,” she declared, as she wiped her eyes. “I'm glad you've kept me from breaking down.”

“I wonder that you didn't wait until you knew him better before making this engagement,” I said.

“But he was so gentlemanly and nice,” she went on; “and Mr. Pike, the lumber king from Michigan, introduced him to me and said that he had known him a long time. Then the colonel is acquainted with counts and barons and other grand people. He claimed to be an old friend of yours and of Mr. Norris. He said that the last time he called on you he went away with your hat by mistake, and showed me your initials in the one he wore.”

“He often associates with property of a questionable character, but I was not aware that he had got in with the counts and barons,” I said.

“He knows the Count Carola very well,” she declared.

“Leave them to each other--they deserve it,” I said. “Return to Rome and refer Wilton to me, and refuse to have anything more to do with him.”

She asked for my bill, but I assured her that dollars were too small for such a service, and that I couldn't think of accepting anything less than thanks in a case of that kind.

I left her and got a bite to eat and went to our hotel at three-thirty. Betsey was waiting for me at the door. She was pale and excited.

“We've had a dreadful time,” said she. “Gwendolyn and I had gone on while Richard was paying our bill in a shop. Suddenly a young man came and spoke to Gwendolyn. Richard saw it. In a second I heard a horrible thump and saw the young Italian lying in the mud. He didn't try to get up. Looked as if he was sleeping.”

“It's bad weather for Romeoing,” I answered. “That count should have waited till the streets were dry. Where are they?”

“Gwendolyn is in the parlor. Richard said that we should look for him on the road and took a fiacre and flew. The girl is frightened.”

Betsey brought her out, and we got into the car and sped away.

“One more count!” I exclaimed, with a laugh.

“One less count!” said Gwendolyn. “I'm sure he's dead.”

“Ladies have limited rights outside the house in Italy,” I said.

“I don't mind those silly men,” said Gwendolyn. “I've been spoken to like that a dozen times, but I hurry along and pretend that I do not hear them.”

“That count will be careful after this,” I suggested.

“If he lives,” said Gwendolyn. “I'm afraid that his head is cracked.”

“His head was cracked long ago,” was my answer.

“Uncle Soc,” said Gwendolyn (she had begun to call me Uncle Soc there in Italy), “Richard and Italy could never get along together.”

“Richard, Gwendolyn, and America are a better combination,” I suggested.

“What a pretty thought!” she exclaimed, just as we overtook the young man about a mile out on the highway to Rome.

“Get in here and behave yourself,” I said. “You've had exercise enough.”

“I could stand more, if necessary,” he answered, with a laugh, as he sat down with us.

That ride to Rome was one of the merriest, in my life. For the young people it had been a day of joy and progress, but on the whole it hadn't been a highly creditable day. So let's drop the curtain right here and let it go into history.

XI.--IN WHICH WE GET INTO THE FLASH AND GLITTER OF HIGH LIFE

NEXT evening Betsey and I went to dinner with Mrs. Moses Fraley, of Terre Haute, at a fashionable hotel. There we saw a show-window in one of the greatest matrimonial department stores in Europe. Buyers and sellers and bought and sold were there in full force to inspect the bargains, and we were able to note reliably the undertone of the market; and our observations had some effect, I believe, on the fortunes of Miss Norris.

Nothing was said of “the count” in our invitation, but we hoped to have at least a look at him. We put on our best clothes, and our plain, agricultural natures were well disguised when the impressive head porter at our destination helped us out of Norris's car and almost touched his forehead on the pavement at sight of us. That bow was easily worth a two-franc piece, and he got it.

“The Yank and his franc are easily parted,” Betsey remarked, as we entered the great whirling door.

We were in the game, and I was firmly resolved to keep pace with our compatriots from Terre Haute for one evening, anyhow. Two more double-franc pieces in the coat-room established my reputation. With a good suit of clothes and the sudden expenditure of two dollars and a half you can acquire a reputation in any European hotel. Reputations are the cheapest things in Europe, but the costs for upkeep are considerable. Every young man in the place was trying to do something for us and I began to feel the rich, blue blood in my veins.

Mrs. Fraley and her niece, in long trains, received and presented us to their guests. Among them was the lady from Flint who had got the cramp in her leg at Hadrian's Villa, and who lived at the same boarding-house with Mrs. Fraley. Her name was Sampf--“Mrs. Sampf,” they called her. I always have to go to my note-book when I try to think of that name. We always refer to her as the lady whose name sounded like boiling mush. There were also a sad but handsome young woman of the name of Rantone, a Minnesota girl who had married an Italian doctor; Mr. Pike, the whiskered lumber king who was studying the history of the world and whose bust we had surveyed in the studio of De Langueville, and a certain young man connected with one of the embassies.

“The count couldn't come,” said Mrs. Fraley. “He wrote that nothing would please him more than to meet Mr. and Mrs. Socrates Pot ter, but that he was, unfortunately, quite ill.”

I did not know until then that these good people had come to meet us.

“Perhaps you'll help us to appraise our loss by giving me his name,” I suggested.

“Oh, it is the wonderful Count Carola!” said she. “He is about the most fascinating creature that I ever saw.”

My brain reeled and fell at her feet and called silently for help. In half a second it had picked itself up again.

We went into the dining-room. What a fair of jewels and laces and fresh-cut flowers! At eleven o'clock they were going to have a dance--kind of a surprise party! They called it The Ball of the Roses. Our table had a big crop of red and white roses, and in the middle of it was a little fountain among ferns. Its spray fell with a pleasant sound upon water-lilies in a big, mossy bowl.

The retired lumber king sat opposite me, and a retired frog sat between us on a lily-pad at the edge of the fountain-bowl. He was a goodsized real frog who was planning to return to active life, I judged, for he sat with alert eyes as if on the lookout for a business opportunity. I observed that he looked hopefully at me when I sat down at the right of Mrs. Fraley, with Mrs. Sampf at my side, as if willing to abandon the frivolous life any minute if I could suggest an opening for an energetic young frog. Mrs. Fraley explained that the frog was tied to the edge of the bowl by a silk thread which was fastened about his neck. I ceased then to fear and suspect him.

I could not help thinking how much good Terre Haute money had gone into these decorations, and we should have been just as well pleased without the frog and the fountain.

Here we are at last right in the midst of things--grandeur! high life! nobility! abdominal hills and valleys! fair slopes of rolling, open country with their stones imbedded in gold and platinum! toes twinging with gout! faces with the utohel look on them!

What a pantheon of rococo deities was this dining-room--princes and princesses, counts and discounts, countesses and marquises, Wall Street millionaires and millionheiresses, and average American wives and widows with friends and dining-men. What is a dining-man? He's a professional diner-out. He has only to look aristocratic and speak Italian--or English with a Fifth-Avenue accent--and be able to recognize the people worth while. A fat old English duchess with a staff in her hand and the royal purple in her hair made her way to her table with the walk of an apple-woman. There was no nonsense about her, no illusions, no clinging to a vanished youth. She was a real woman, and I could have kissed the hem of her garments for joy.

A lady sat at one of the tables who suggested the chloride of nitrogen, being so fat and fetched in at the waist that her shoulders heaved at every breath, and one could not look at her without fearing that she would explode and fill the air with hooks and eyes and buttons.

A large, swell-front, fully furnished Pennsylvania widow sat near us with her young daughter and a marquis and a well-earned reputation for great wealth. It seemed to be a busy, popular, agreeable reputation, with many acquaintances in the room. The widow's costume pleaded for observation and secured it, for she sat serene and prodigious in jeweled fat and satin, dripping pearls and emeralds and diamonds. There was a battlement of diamonds on her brow and a cinch of them on her neck, surrounded by a stone wall of pearls as big as the marbles that I used to play with as a boy. Hanging from her ears were two mammoth pearls, either of which in a sling might have slain Goliath. Her shoulders glowed with gems, and a stomacher of diamonds adorned her intemperate zone. What a fresco of American abundance she made in the remarkable decorations of that room. By and by she drew a wallet from her breast and paid her bill.

“How wonderful!” our hostess exclaimed, suddenly.

A princess in red slippers and with no stockings on her feet, as Mrs. Fraley informed me, strode in with her young man and took a table near us. She had been a Wisconsin girl, and her happy Fifth Avenue dialect rose like the spray of a fountain and fell lightly on our ears.

“We had a sockless statesman in our country, but I never heard of a sockless princess before,” Mrs. Sampf sputtered. “They tell me that some of these aristocrats are very poor.”

Mrs. Sampf had been to Egypt and the Holy Land, and talked freely of her travels.

“Yes, we went up the Nile to see the dam,” she said. “It's a good dam, I guess, but I didn't care much for it. What I wanted to see was the life. The folks are awful dirty; I wanted to take a scrubbing-brush and some Pearline and go at 'em.”

“A few American women with scrubbing-brushes would improve the Egyptian race,” I suggested. “How about the food?”

“Heavens! I've et everything there is going, I guess; it would take you a month to learn the names of the vittles. I've got 'em all in my diary.”

“I suppose you enjoyed the ruins,” I said.

And she went on:

“I saw a bull temple; it was very nice. You know, they used to worship bulls. I don't know what for. They must have been hard up for something to worship. There was five of us traveling on our own hooks. We saw one temple that was quite nicely carved--had crows and goats on it. I love goats. Sometimes I think that I must have been a goat in some previous life.”

I disagreed with her.

“The pyramids were curious things,” she continued. “Some folks never slid down into 'em at all after traveling all that distance, but I slid. Since I was a child I have always loved sliding. The most interesting thing I saw was three baby camels and some Highland soldiers in Jerusalem with no pants on and funny little skirts that came down to their knees,” she continued. “In the Holy Land I saw a lot of men in skirts with baggy pants reaching from their knees down.”

She was apparently much interested in the subject of pants, and hurried on:

“I found a wonderful old knocker there. By the way, I'm making a collection of knockers. Have you seen any good ones here in Rome?”

“Not a knocker! But I haven't been looking for them.” And I added, “I wonder some one doesn't make a collection of pants--pants of every age and clime.”

“What kind of pants did the ancient Romans wear?” she asked.

“The same as Adam--the style hadn't changed in ages.”

This woman had got a knocker in Jerusalem, and seen some baby camels and a number of pantless men; she had seen a bull temple and slid into a pyramid in Egypt; she had “et vittles” everywhere, and suffered from cramp in sundry places, and languished in a hot, stuffy state-room with a quarrelsome lady from Connecticut, all for sixteen hundred dollars and four months of time. Yet far more than half of the great caravan of American tourists invading Europe and the East get no more than she did. The poetry and beauty of the Old World and the money of the New are thus wasted on each other.

“America is a pretty good country,” I suggested. “There are buildings in New York as wonderful as any you will see here, and our scenery is excellent.”

“But we have no ruins,” said Mrs. Fraley.

“On the contrary, we have the grandest ruins in the world,” I insisted. “We have the ruins of slavery and of the old error of unequal, rights; there all our feudal inheritance has been turned into ruins. Even that everlasting lake of fire, which is still needed in Europe, is with us a cold and mossy ruin. Nothing in it but garbage these days. We have physical ruins, too, and very ancient ones, but we are a working community, not a show. In our structures, like the Pennsylvania Station, is the sublimity of hope and promise, not the sublimity of death and decay.”

My friends looked at me with surprise. They had heard only the lyrical chorus of their countrymen accompanied by the jingle of francs.

“You're right,” said the lumber king. “I thought that I'd try to live here a few years because I can't find enough playmates in America; every one is busy there. So I thought I'd come over here and study and fool around. It's done me good.”

“Fooling around is better than nothing if done with energy and vigor,” I suggested. “A capable fool-arounder isn't worth much, but he can keep his liver busy. Here they have professional fool-arounders with gold letters on their caps to set the pace. It's all right for a while, but you'll want to get back to the lumber business.”

“Maybe you're right, but Europe has done me a lot o' good,” said Mr. Pike. “The cure up at Kissingen fixed my stomach trouble. Cost like Sam Hill, but it knocked it out.”

“What was the cure?” I asked.

“Made me walk _ten_ miles a day, and take baths and give up pastry, and go to bed at nine.”

“And you had to travel four thousand miles and give up a lot of good American money to learn that?” I asked. “Old Doctor Common Sense, assisted by a little will-power, would have done that for you without charge right in your own home. Is it possible that the old doctor has gone out of business in Prairie du Chien?”

“He died long ago,” said the lumber king. “We have to be led to water like a horse these days.”

“We follow Cook in the trails of Baedeker instead of following the hired man, and we value everything according to its cost,” I answered. “But it's good for the Yankee to travel in a pieless world.”

“Travel is such a wonderful thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Fraley, who preferred to paddle in the heavenly gush-ways. “Don't you _love_ Italy?”

I took off my mental shoes and stockings and began to paddle with her.

“Grand country!” I splashed.

Then she lay down in the stream and got wet all over as follows:

“It's so wonderful! I love the churches and their music, and mosaics and statues, and the palaces and the nobility,” Mrs. Fraley chanted. “These well-bred Italians look so aristocratic!”

“And they act so aristocratic--nothing to do but eat and drink and sleep and dance and get married!” was my answer. “We're rather careless about those things in America. A real aristocrat always gets married very carefully and so rescues himself from the curse of toil if need be. We don't take any pains with our marrying. We marry in the most offhand, reckless fashion just to gratify our emotions.”

“We forget that a dollar married is better than two dollars earned,” said Betsey.

“And isn't soiled by perspiration,” I said. “In this room are some of the shrewdest marryers in the world--men who by careful attention to the business have amassed fortunes. Here, too, are some of the most promising young marryers in Italy. They are sure to make their mark.”

“Indeed! You must tell me of them,” said the good soul.

“I shall tell you of one only--not now but before I leave you,” I answered.

There was a high, moral purpose back of this remark, but it seemed to get me into trouble, for I had no sooner finished it than the frog gave a swift leap, broke his halter, and landed on me. I suppose that he was an Italian frog. Possibly he had only slipped his halter--I never learned the precise facts. Anyhow, he had got on the edge of the bowl unobserved, and picked out a partner. He could not have chosen a worse place to land, for he struck my shirt with a noisy thud just under my necktie, and bounded into a dish of French dressing and out of it. I saw him bracing, and was about to seize him when he fetched a leap that took him over the head of the lumber king. The frog landed with a wet thump on the bare back of the sockless princess--who sat close behind Mr. Pike--and tumbled into her train. He was not much of a bareback-rider, that's a sure thing. The princess gave a rebel yell and jumped to her feet and in honest Wisconsin English wanted to know what in God's name it was. The frog had got his toe-nails caught in some lace, and was captured by a waiter. Ladies who had not spoken the American language in years used it freely.

The princess left the room with her friends and a quantity of French dressing on her back. The diplomat looked at me and smiled and said:

“The princess is in hard luck, and I can't help speaking of it. If a meteor should fall into Italy it would land on the princess. Her husband gets drunk now and then and beats her up. I believe that he has worn out several canes on her person. I saw her once when she had been beaten black and blue. She decided then to leave him.”

“But didn't?” I asked.

“No; her husband made love to her again, and she couldn't resist him. He's a great love-maker. Two or three times she has been on the point of going back to her people, but hasn't. Poor thing! She's too proud to go home and acknowledge the truth--that she has been a fool and her husband a brute.”

I was now pretty well prepared for my next talk with Mrs. Norris.

We left the dining-room, and I took Mrs. Fraley to a seat in the corridor and told her of the knight-like temperament of the young Count Carola, and of his high rank as a discoverer of wealth and beauty.

She showed no surprise, but said: “We had heard that he was engaged to Miss Norris, but the count says that the report is untrue. He has not really asked my niece to marry him yet, but he calls her the most beautiful woman he ever saw. Do you blame him?”

“Not a bit, although your niece is the second girl to whom he has awarded the first premium within three days. There may be others, but that is going some.”

All this had no effect on the armor-clad, brain-proof lady to whom it was addressed.

“It's his natural chivalry,” she said, as I rose to go.

“And discovering the most beautiful woman in the world is his daily habit,” was my answer; and we bade each other good night.

When Betsey and I were going home she gave me an account of her talk with Mrs. Rantone. The young woman's father had been a successful Minnesota grocer. The family came to Italy on a Cook's tour. The young man fell in love with the grocer's daughter, and they met him everywhere they went. He followed them to Minnesota, and the two were married there. Mrs. Rantone had said that he was a fine man and an excellent doctor, but that his friends would have nothing to do with her because she was the daughter of a tradesman of moderate means. They had supposed that every American who traveled abroad was rich, as indeed such travelers ought to be. After living nearly eight years in Rome she had only three Italian friends. She naturally felt that she was a dead weight on the shoulders of her husband; that she could contribute nothing to his success and she was most unhappy.

“Are your parents still living in Minnesota?” Betsey asked.

“They're all alone in the old home,” said the poor expatriate.

“They must miss you terribly.”

“Well, why did they bring me here?” was her pathetic answer.

I could see that Betsey was recovering from the fascinations of the marriage market.

“The 'devil-_op_-ments' of this night should have some effect on the price of Romeos,” I remarked.

“And the insanity of Juliets,” said Betsey. “I'm going to spring this on Gwen and her mother. But they won't believe it.”

When we arrived at our hotel its porter gave me a note from Norris which said:

“Please come to my room on receipt of this.”

XII.--IN WHICH NORRIS TAKES HIS LIGHT FROM UNDER THE BUSHEL