m. Here, however, I was mistaken, as
the reader will discover.

Three or four days later the priest came to me one morning, to ask when I
would like dinner, as I was to dine in my room.

"Why so?" I asked.

"Because the count left yesterday for Gorice, telling me he did not know
when he should come back. He ordered me to give you your meals in your
room."

"Very good. I will dine at one."

No one could be more in favour of liberty and independence than myself,
but I could not help feeling that my rough host should have told me he
was going to Gorice. He stayed a week, and I should have died of
weariness if it had not been for my daily visits to the Baron del Mestre.
Otherwise there was no company, the priest was an uneducated man, and
there were no pretty country girls. I felt as if I could not bear another
four weeks of such a doleful exile.

When the count came back, I spoke to him plainly.

"I came to Spessa," I said, "to keep you company and to amuse myself; but
I see that I am in the way, so I hope you will take me back to Gorice and
leave me there. You must know that I like society as much as you do, and
I do not feel inclined to die of solitary weariness in your house."

He assured me that it should not happen again, that he had gone to Gorice
to meet an actress, who had come there purposely to see him, and that he
had also profited by the opportunity to sign a contract of marriage with
a Venetian lady.

These excuses and the apparently polite tone in which they were uttered
induced me to prolong my stay with the extraordinary count.

He drew the whole of his income from vineyards, which produced an
excellent white wine and a revenue of a thousand sequins a year. However,
as the count did his best to spend double that amount, he was rapidly
ruining himself. He had a fixed impression that all the tenants robbed
him, so whenever he found a bunch of grapes in a cottage he proceeded to
beat the occupants unless they could prove that the grapes did not come
from his vineyards. The peasants might kneel down and beg pardon, but
they were thrashed all the same.

I had been an unwilling witness of several of these arbitrary and cruel
actions, when one day I had the pleasure of seeing the count soundly
beaten by two peasants. He had struck the first blow himself, but when he
found that he was getting the worst of it he prudently took to his heels.

He was much offended with me for remaining a mere spectator o