the springtime
also affected him. The deep blue sky, cloudless, dense, dark, made him
languish. Instead of entertaining himself with something or other, he
did scarcely anything all day long but walk.

_TWO ABSURD MEN_

"I have continually near me in the hotel," wrote Caesar to Alzugaray,
"two absurd fellows: one is one of those stout red Germans with a square
head; the other a fine slim Norwegian. The German, who is a captain in
some service or other, is a restless man, always busy about what the
devil I don't know. He is constantly carrying about trunks and boxes,
with the aid of a sorrowful valet, dressed in black, who appears to
detest his position. The captain must devote the morning to doing
gymnastics, for I hear him from my room, which is next to his, jumping
and dropping weights on the floor, each of which must weigh half a ton,
to judge by the noise they make.

"He does all this to vocal commands, and when some feat doesn't go right
he reprimands himself.

"This German isn't still a moment; he opens the salon door, crosses the
room, stands at the window, takes up a paper, puts it down. He is a type
that makes me nervous.

"The Norwegian at first appeared to be a reasonable man, somewhat
sullen. He looked frowningly at me, and I watched him equally
frowningly, and took him for a thinker, an Ibsenite whose imagination
was lost among the ice of his own country. Now and then I would see
him walking up and down the corridor, rubbing his hands together so
continuously and so frantically that they made a noise like bones.

"Suddenly, this gentleman is transformed as if by magic; he begins to
joke with the servants, he seizes a chair and dances with it, and the
other day I saw him alone in the salon marching around with a paper hat
on his head, like children playing soldiers, and blowing on a cornet,
also made of paper." I stared at him in amazement, he smiled like a
child, and asked if he was disturbing me.

"'No, no, not in the least,' I told him.

"I have asked in the hotel if this man is crazy, and they have told me
that he is not, but is a professor, a man of science, who is known to
have these strange fits of gaiety.

"Another of the Norwegian's doings has been to compose a serenade, with
a vulgar melody that would disgust you, and which he has dedicated '_A
la bella Italia_.' He wrote the Italian words himself, but as he knows
no music, he had a pianist come here and write out his serenade. Wha