success: the San Martinos, the Countess Brenda, the
other ladies congratulated her. The hat, above all, seemed ideal to
them.

Carminatti was in raptures.

"_E bello, bellissimo_," he said, with great enthusiasm, and all the
ladies agreed that it was _bellissimo_, lengthening the "s" and nodding
their heads with a gesture of admiration.

"And you don't say anything to me, _bambino_?" Laura inquired of Caesar.

"I say you are all right."

"And nothing more?"

"If you want me to pay you a compliment, I will tell you that you are
pretty enough to make incest legitimate." "What a barbarian!" murmured
Laura, half laughing, half blushing.

"What has he been saying to you?" two or three people inquired.

Laura translated his words into Italian, and Carminatti found them
admirable.

"Very appropriate! Very witty!" he exclaimed, laughing, and gave Caesar
a friendly slap on the shoulder.

The Marchesa Sciacca looked at Laura several times with reflective
glances and a rancorous smile.

"The truth is that these Southern people are just children," thought
Caesar, mockingly. "What an inveterate preoccupation they have in the
beautiful."

The Neapolitan was one of those most preoccupied with esthetics.

Caesar had a room opposite Signor Carminatti's, and the first few days
he had thought it was a woman's room. Toilet flasks, sprays, boxes of
powder; the room looked like a perfumery shop.

"It is curious," Caesar used to think, "how these people from famous
historic towns can combine powder and the _maffia_, opoponax and
daggers."

Almost every night after dinner there was an improvised dance in the
salon. Somebody played the languorous waltzes of the Tzigane orchestras
on the piano. The Maltese and Carminatti used to sing romantic songs, of
the kind whose words and music seem to be always the same, and in which
there invariably is question of panting, refulgent, love, and other
suggestive words.

One Sunday evening, when it was raining, Caesar stayed in the hotel.

In the salon Carminatti was doing sleight-of-hand to entertain the
ladies. Afterwards the Neapolitan was seen pursuing the Marchesa Sciacca
and the two San Martino girls in the corridors. They shrieked shrilly
when he grabbed them around the waist. The devil of a Neapolitan was an
expert at sleight-of-hand.

VII. THE CONFIDENCES OF THE ABBE PRECIOZI

_NATURAL VARIETIES OF NOSES AND EXPRESSIONS_

Caesar admitted before his conscience that