e which he
himself desired to obtain sight of; "for the wench has caused me three
sleepless nights," he confessed frankly. Jacob affected not to
understand. Luigi and Beppo now leaned against the wall on either side of
him and baited him till he shook with rage.

"He is the lord of the duchess, his mistress--what a lucky fellow!" said
Luigi. "When he's dog at the gates no one can approach her. When he
isn't, you can fancy what!"--"He's only a mechanical contrivance; he's
not a man," said Beppo. "He's the principal flea-catcher of the palace,"
said Luigi--"here he is all day, and at night the devil knows where he
hunts."--Luigi hopped in a half-circle round the exacerbated Jacob, and
finally provoked an assault that gave an opening to Beppo. They all ran
in, Luigi last. Jacob chased Beppo up the stairs, lost him, and
remembered what he had said of the letter borne by Luigi, for whom he
determined to lie in waiting. "Better two in there than one," he thought.
The two courted his Aennchen openly; but Luigi, as the bearer of an
amorous letter from the signor of quality, who could be no other than
signor Antonio-Pericles, was the one to be intercepted. Like other
jealous lovers, Jacob wanted to read Aennchen's answer, to be cured of
his fatal passion for the maiden, and on this he set the entire force of
his mind.

Running up by different staircases, Beppo and Luigi came upon Aennchen
nearly at the same time. She turned a cold face on Beppo, and requested
Luigi to follow her. Astonished to see him in such favour, Beppo was
ready to provoke the quarrel before the kiss when she returned; but she
said that she had obeyed her mistress's orders, and was obeying the
duchess in refusing to speak of them, or of anything relating to them.
She had promised him an interview in that little room leading into the
duchess's boudoir. He pressed her to conduct him. "Ah; then it's not for
me you come," she said. Beppo had calculated that the kiss would open his
way to the room, and the quarrel disembarrass him of his pretty companion
when there. "You have come to listen to conversation again," said
Aennchen. "Ach! the fool a woman is to think that you Italians have any
idea except self-interest when you, when you . . . talk nonsense to us.
Go away, if you please. Good-evening." She dropped a curtsey with a surly
coquetry, charming of its kind. Beppo protested that the room was dear to
him because there first he had known for one blissful hal