with happy accidents--accidents, especially, in
which his characteristic gallantry was not allowed to rust for want of
exercise. He lounged, however, contentedly enough through these bright,
still days of a Tuscan April, drawing much entertainment from the high
picturesqueness of the things about him. Siena, a few years since, was
a flawless gift of the Middle Ages to the modern imagination. No other
Italian city could have been more interesting to an observer fond
of reconstructing obsolete manners. This was a taste of Bernard
Longueville's, who had a relish for serious literature, and at one time
had made several lively excursions into mediaeval history. His friends
thought him very clever, and at the same time had an easy feeling about
him which was a tribute to his freedom from pedantry. He was clever
indeed, and an excellent companion; but the real measure of his
brilliancy was in the success with which he entertained himself. He was
much addicted to conversing with his own wit, and he greatly enjoyed his
own society. Clever as he often was in talking with his friends, I am
not sure that his best things, as the phrase is, were not for his
own ears. And this was not on account of any cynical contempt for the
understanding of his fellow-creatures: it was simply because what I have
called his own society was more of a stimulus than that of most other
people. And yet he was not for this reason fond of solitude; he was, on
the contrary, a very sociable animal. It must be admitted at the outset
that he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict
itself, as will probably be perceived in the course of this narration.

He entertained himself greatly with his reflections and meditations upon
Sienese architecture and early Tuscan art, upon Italian street-life and
the geological idiosyncrasies of the Apennines. If he had only gone to
the other inn, that nice-looking girl whom he had seen passing under the
dusky portal with her face turned away from him might have broken bread
with him at this intellectual banquet. Then came a day, however, when
it seemed for a moment that if she were disposed she might gather up the
crumbs of the feast. Longueville, every morning after breakfast, took
a turn in the great square of Siena--the vast piazza, shaped like
a horse-shoe, where the market is held beneath the windows of that
crenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower
springs up with a movement