rs, whose faces beamed with the
profits of their rich olive and vine yards,--of all these notabilities
not one ventured to contradict Fra Angelico, not at least, when
previous to one of his longer harangues, he polished his large silver
spectacles on his coat-sleeve and began, "_Ecco signori miei_, the
matter stands thus." But all the same he was the best and most harmless
creature in the world, and the most amiable landlord one could
desire, provided one had no wish beyond a hard bed, and two ricketty
arm-chairs! He was certainly fond of me, although, or perhaps _because_
he had not the faintest idea that I was a brother poet. I was discreet
enough to confine myself to playing the part of a grateful public, and
it was not until after the four-and-twentieth sonnet that I would
gently lay my hand on his arm and say, "Bravo, Signor Angelo! But I
fear this is too much of a good thing. Your poetry, is you know,
potent, and flies to the head. To-morrow you shall fill me up a new
flask from your Hippocrene." Whereupon with the most good-humoured look
imaginable he would close his volume and say, "What avail if I read you
to sleep, night after night a whole year through? I should still not
have come to an end! Here we have another Peru!" And tapping on his
bald forehead he would sigh, offer a pinch of snuff, and wish me a good
night.

The majority of these poems were of course devoted to love, and when
the little man recited them with sparkling eyes and all the pathos
common to his nation, it was easy to forget his five and fifty years.
Nevertheless, he lived a bachelor's life, with one old maid-servant and
a boy who helped him with his salves and potions, and it seemed strange
that with all his love for the beautiful and his comfortable means, he
should never have married, nor even now in his sunny autumn seem
inclined to make up for lost time. One evening, when we sat smoking
together over the good home-grown wine, and I jokingly asked him why he
took his monkish nickname so much in earnest, and whether none of the
pretty girls that daily passed his shop had contrived to touch his
heart, he suddenly looked up at me with a strange expression, and said,
"Pretty girls? Well, I daresay they are not so far from it either, and
marriage may be better than is reported. But I am too old for a young
man, and too young for an old one, or rather let me say too much of a
poet. The older the bird, the harder to catch. And then you see, my