he
grew angry, and gave such proofs of his sincerity that Pennellini was
convinced, and owned to himself, "This madman is actually
enamored,--enamored,--like a cat! Patience! What will ever those
Cenarotti say?"

In a little while poor Tonelli lost the philosophic mind with which he
had at first received the congratulations of his friends, and, from
reasoning with them, fell to resenting their good wishes. Very little
things irritated him, and pleasantries which he had taken in excellent
part, time out of mind, now raised his anger. His barber had for many
years been in the habit of saying, as he applied the stick of fixature
to Tonelli's mustache, and gave it a jaunty upward curl, "Now we will
bestow that little dash of youthfulness"; and it both amazed and hurt
him to have Tonelli respond with a fierce "Tsit!" and say that this jest
was proper in its antiquity to the times of Romulus rather than our own
period, and so go out of the shop without that "Adieu, old fellow,"
which he had never failed to give in twenty years. "Capperi!" said the
barber, when he emerged from a profound revery into which this outbreak
had plunged him, and in which he had remained holding the nose of his
next customer, and tweaking it to and fro in the violence of his
emotions, regardless of those mumbled maledictions which the lather
would not permit the victim to articulate. "If Tonelli is so savage in
his betrothal, we must wait for his marriage to tame him. I am sorry. He
was always such a good devil."

But if many things annoyed Tonelli, there were some that deeply wounded
him, and chiefly the fact that his betrothal seemed to have fixed an
impassable gulf of years between him and all those young men whose
company he loved so well. He had really a boy's heart, and he had
consorted with them because he felt himself nearer their age than his
own. Hitherto they had in no wise found his presence a restraint. They
had always laughed, and told their loves, and spoken their young men's
thoughts, and made their young men's jokes, without fear or shame,
before the merry-hearted sage, who never offered good advice, if indeed
he ever dreamed that there was a wiser philosophy than theirs. It had
been as if he were the youngest among them; but now, in spite of all
that he or they could do, he seemed suddenly and irretrievably aged.
They looked at him strangely, as if for the first time they saw that
his mustache was gray, that his brow was not smoo