t
he especially wants is that it should be full of sentiment; and so the
pianist arranged it with directions and many pauses, which satisfied
the Norwegian. Almost every night the serenade '_A la bella Italia_'
is sung. Somebody who wants to amuse himself goes to the piano, the
Norwegian strikes a languid attitude and chants his serenade. Sometimes
he goes in front of the piano, sometimes behind, but invariably he hears
the storm of applause when it ends, and he bows with great gusto.

"I don't know whether it's the other people who are laughing at him, or
he who is laughing at the others.

"The other day he said to me in his macaronic Italian:

"'Mr. Spaniard, I have good eyesight, good hearing, a good sense of
smell, and... lots of sentiment.'

"I didn't exactly understand what he meant me to think, and I didn't pay
any attention to him.

"It seems that the Norwegian is going away soon, and as the day of his
departure approaches, he grows funereal."

_THE SADNESS OF LIFE_

"I don't know why I don't go away," Caesar wrote to his friend another
time. "When I go out in the evening and see the ochre-coloured houses on
both sides and the blue sky above, a horrible sadness takes me. These
spring days oppress me, make me want to weep; it seems to me it would
be better to be dead, leaving no tomb or name or other ridiculous and
disagreeable thing, but disappearing into the air or the sea. It
doesn't seem natural; but I have never been so happy as one time when I
was in Paris sick, alone and with a fever. I was in an hotel room and
my window looked into the garden of a fine house, where I could see the
tops of the trees; and I transformed them into a virgin forest, wherein
marvellous adventures happened to me.

"Since then I have often thought that things are probably neither good
nor bad, neither sad nor happy, in themselves; he who has sound, normal
nerves, and a brain equally sound, reflects the things around him like a
good mirror, and feels with comfort the impression of his conformity to
nature; nowadays we who have nerves all upset and brains probably upset
too, form deceptive reflections. And so, that time in Paris, sick and
shut in, I was happy; and here, sound and strong, when toward nightfall,
I look at the splendid skies, the palaces, the yellow walls that take an
extraordinary tone, I feel that I am one of the most miserable men on
the planet...."

_ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON_

His lack of tranquillit