teen
months had now passed since the captain's departure, and no one spoke
of him, at least no one said any good of him, fearing to be overheard
by somebody who might repeat it to Barbarossa. Imagine, therefore, my
horror one afternoon. I had just opened a bottle of castor oil, and was
thinking of nothing worse, when Signor Gustavo his own very self
entered my room as though nothing had happened. '_Corpo della
Madonna!_' I cried, 'What wind has blown you here? Are you so weary of
life that you determine to make your villa your mausoleum?' Then he
told me that he had not been able to endure either the East or West.
Nowhere had he found any flavour in the wine, everywhere the women were
tedious, and since he had fired at men, the chase of lions and hyenas
had become insipid. And always too he had been pursued by the feeling
that he had, like a contemptible coward, left the field to his foe,
instead of waiting to measure his strength against him. And a short
time back, when staying at some German Spa, he read a newspaper account
of the Sabine mountains being again ravaged by banditti, and of Papal
carabinieri having for months pursued the vagabonds, who seemed as
inexterminable as toadstools after rain: why then he had found the
monotonous elegant world in which he was living, simply intolerable,
and taking an extra post, he had travelled day and night without
halting, crossed the Alps, and got here. And now here he was again
settled in the vineyard. Maddalena had been actually wild with joy, and
he himself felt more at home than he had done for a year and a day.
'And what then was he going to do here?' asked I in horror and
amazement. 'Oh!' said he, 'I shall have no lack of occupation; I shall
join the patrol of gendarmes that are constantly on the mountains, and
so as a volunteer and dilettante face my man. When I come to consider
it, it was I who hung this mill-stone about your necks, and so it is
only fair that I should try to help you off with it. Good-day, Angelo,
pay me a visit in my mausoleum.'

"And away he went: he had grown so strangely restless--quite unlike his
former self--that he could not stay long in any one place. What I felt
about the whole affair, I leave you to imagine. Meanwhile it had never
been my wont to play the coward, and indeed here it behoved me to take
the initiative, on account of my old acquaintance with Signor Gustavo.
So I boldly visited him in the villa, and found everything just as
tho