ne of somebody's dream, which foretold abundance and a good
harvest."

The Englishman, Kennedy, had also little liking for Jews.

"I do not hate a Jew as anti-Christian," said Caesar; "but as
super-Christian. Nor do I hate the race, but the tendency they have
never to be producers, but always middlemen, and because they incarnate
so well for our era the love of money, and of joy and pleasure."

The English author was a great partisan of Jews, and he asserted that
they were more distinguished in science and the arts than any other
race. The Jewish question was dropped in an instant, when they saw a
smart lady come in accompanied by a pale man with a black shock of hair
and an uneasy eye.

"That is the Hungarian violinist Kolozsvar," said Susanna.

"Kolozsvar, Kolozsvar!" they heard everybody saying.

"Is he a great virtuoso?" Caesar asked Kennedy.

"No, I think not," answered Kennedy. "It seems that this Hungarian's
speciality is playing the waltzes and folk-songs of his own country,
which is certainly not anything great; but his successes are not
obtained with the violin, but among the women. The ladies in London
fight for him. His game is to pass himself off as a fallen man,
depraved, worn-out. There you have his phraseology.... They see a man to
save, to raise up, and convert into a great artist, and almost all of
them yield to this temptation."

"That is comical," said Caesar, looking curiously at the fiddler and his
lady.

"To a Spaniard," replied Kennedy, "it is comical; and probably it would
be to an Italian too; but in England there are many women that have a
purely imaginative idealism, a romanticism fed on ridiculous novels, and
they fall into traps like these, which seem clumsy and grotesque to you
here in the South, where people are more clear-sighted and realistic."

Caesar watched the brave fiddler, who played the role of a man used up,
to great perfection.

After tea, Susanna invited them to go up to her rooms, and Laura and her
brother and Kennedy and Mr. Russell went.

The English author had met a colleague, with whom he stayed behind
talking, and Marchmont remained in the "hall," as if it did not seem to
him proper for him to go to his wife's rooms.

Susanna's rooms were very high, had balconies on the Via Veneto, and
were almost opposite Queen Margherita's palace. One overlooked the
garden and could see the Queen Mother taking her walks, which is not
without its importance for persons w