f you go by his own
initials."

"Johannn Arendt Happolati!" repeated the man, a little astonished at my
vehemence; and with that he grew silent.

"You should see his wife!" I said, beside myself. "A fatter creature
... Eh? what? Perhaps you don't even believe she is really fat?"

Well, indeed he did not see his way to deny that such a man might
perhaps have a rather stout wife. The old fellow answered quite gently
and meekly to each of my assertions, and sought for words as if he
feared to offend and perhaps make me furious.

"Hell and fire, man! Do you imagine that I am sitting here stuffing you
chock-full of lies?" I roared furiously. "Perhaps you don't even
believe that a man of the name of Happolati exists! I never saw your
match for obstinacy and malice in any old man. What the devil ails you?
Perhaps, too, into the bargain, you have been all this while thinking
to yourself I am a poverty-stricken fellow, sitting here in my
Sunday-best without even a case full of cigarettes in my pocket. Let me
tell you such treatment as yours is a thing I am not accustomed to, and
I won't endure it, the Lord strike me dead if I will--neither from you
nor any one else, do you know that?"

The man had risen with his mouth agape; he stood tongue-tied and
listened to my outbreak until the end. Then he snatched his parcel from
off the seat and went, ay, nearly ran, down the patch, with the short,
tottering steps of an old man.

I leant back and looked at the retreating figure that seemed to shrink
at each step as it passed away. I do not know from where the impression
came, but it appeared to me that I had never in my life seen a more
vile back than this one, and I did not regret that I had abused the
creature before he left me.

The day began to decline, the sun sank, it commenced to rustle lightly
in the trees around, and the nursemaids who sat in groups near the
parallel bars made ready to wheel their perambulators home. I was
calmed and in good spirit. The excitement I had just laboured under
quieted down little by little, and I grew weaker, more languid, and
began to feel drowsy. Neither did the quantity of bread I had eaten
cause me any longer any particular distress. I leant against the back
of the seat in the best of humours, closed my eyes, and got more and
more sleepy. I dozed, and was just on the point of falling asleep, when
a park-keeper put his hand on my shoulder and said:

"You must not sit here and go to slee