heir respective ages,
so long ignored by him, now glared perpetually upon the Marchesino, even
roused within him a certain condemnatory something that was almost akin
to moral sense, a rare enough bird in Naples. He said to himself that
Emilio was a wicked old man, "un vecchio briccone." The delights of sin
were the prerogative of youth. Abruptly this illuminating fact swam,
like a new comet, within the ken of the Marchesino. He towered towards
the heights of virtuous indignation. As he lay upon his fevered pillow,
drinking a tisane prepared by his anxious mamma, he understood the inner
beauty of settling down--for the old, and white-haired age, still intent
upon having its fling, appeared to him so truly pitiable and disgusting
that he could almost have wept for Emilio had he not feared to make
himself more feverish by such an act of enlightened friendship.

And the sense and appreciation of the true morality, ravishing in its
utter novelty for the young barbarian, was cherished by the Marchesino
until he began almost to swell with virtue, and to start on stilts to
heaven, big with the message that wickedness was for the young and must
not be meddled with by any one over thirty--the age at which, till now,
he had always proposed to himself to marry some rich girl and settle
down to the rigid asceticism of Neapolitan wedded life.

And as the Marchesino had lain in bed tingling with morality, so did
he get up and issue forth to the world, and even set sail upon the
following day for the island. Morality was thick upon him, as upon that
"briccone" Emilio, something else was thick. About mediaeval chivalry
he knew precisely nothing. Yet, as the white wings of his pretty yacht
caught the light breeze of morning, he felt like a most virtuous knight
_sans peur et sans reproche_. He even felt like a steady-going person
with a mission.

But he wished he thoroughly understood the English nation. Towards the
English he felt friendly, as do most Italians; but he knew little of
them, except that they were very rich, lived in a perpetual fog, and
were "un poco pazzi." But the question was how mad--in other words, how
different from Neapolitans--they were! He wished he knew. It would make
things easier for him in his campaign against Emilio.

Till he met the ladies of the island he had never said a hundred words
to any English person. The Neapolitan aristocracy is a very conservative
body, and by no means disposed to cosmopolitani