ing in their broad and dirty hands
two shabby mandolins and a guitar. In the distance a cook with a white
cap on his head and bare arms was visible, as he moved to and fro in the
lighted kitchen of the old ristorante, preparing a "zuppa di pesce" for
the gentlemen from Naples.

"Che bella notte!" said the Marchesino, suddenly.

His voice sounded sentimental. He twisted his mustaches and added:

"Emilio, we ought to have brought two beautiful women with us to-night.
What are the moon and the sea to men without beautiful women?"

"And the fishing?" said Artois.

"To the devil with the fishing," replied the young man. "Ecco! Our
dinner is ready, with thanks to the Madonna!"

They sat down, one on each side of the small table, with a smoking lamp
between them.

"I have ordered vino bianco," said the Marchesino, who still looked
sentimental. "Cameriere, take away the lamp. Put it on the next table.
Va bene. We are going to have 'zuppa di pesce,' gamberi and veal
cutlets. The wine is Capri. Now then," he added, with sudden violence
and the coarsest imaginable Neapolitan accent, "if you fellows play
'Santa Lucia,' 'Napoli Bella,' or 'Sole mio' you'll have my knife in
you. I am not an Inglese. I am a Neapolitan. Remember that!"

He proved it with a string of gutter words and oaths, at which the
musicians smiled with pleasure. Then, turning again to Artois, he
continued:

"If one doesn't tell them they think one is an imbecile. Emilio caro, do
you not love to see the moon with a beautiful girl?"

His curious assumption that Artois and he were contemporaries because
they were friends, and his apparently absolute blindness to the fact
that a man of sixty and a man of twenty-four are hardly likely to
regard the other sex with an exactly similar enthusiasm, always secretly
entertained the novelist, who made it his business with this friend to
be accommodating, and who seldom, if ever, showed himself authoritative,
or revealed any part of his real inner self.

"Ma si!" he replied; "the night and the moon are made for love."

"Everything is made for love," returned the Marchesino. "Take plenty of
soaked bread, Emilio. They know how to make this zuppa here. Everything
is made for love.--Look! There is a boat coming with women in it!"

At a short distance from the shore a rowing boat was visible; and from
it now came shrill sounds of very common voices, followed by shouts of
male laughter.

"Perhaps they are beautiful,"