ave
mentioned, they not infrequently attack the caravans, peck the eyes out
of the camels, and are sometimes even known to carry off a man, a
whole man, vainly struggling in their inexorable talons. There is no
sparrowless south. But as for the goldfinches returning--it is the
instinct of us bipeds to return. Plumed and plumeless, we all return to
something, what though we may have registered the most solemn vows to
remain away."

He delivered his last phrases with an accent, he punctuated them with a
glance, in which there may have lurked an intention.

But the Duchessa did not appear to notice it.

"Yes--true--so we do," she assented vaguely. "And what you tell me of
the sparrows in the Hesperides is very novel and impressive--unless,
indeed, it is a mere traveller's tale, with which you are seeking to
practise upon my credulity. But since I find you in this communicative
vein, will you not push complaisance a half-inch further, and tell me
what that thing is, suspended there in the sky above the crest of the
Cornobastone--that pale round thing, that looks like the spectre of a
magnified half-crown?"

Peter turned to the quarter her gaze indicated.

"Oh, that," he said, "is nothing. In frankness, it is only what the
vulgar style the moon."

"How odd," said she. "I thought it was what the vulgar style the moon."

And they both laughed again.

The Duchessa moved a little; and thus she uncovered, carved on the back
of her marble bench, and blazoned in red and gold, a coat of arms.

She touched the shield with her finger.

"Are you interested in canting heraldry?" she asked. "There is no
country so rich in it as Italy. These are the arms of the Farfalla, the
original owners of this property. Or, seme of twenty roses gules; the
crest, on a rose gules, a butterfly or, with wings displayed; and the
motto--how could the heralds ever have sanctioned such an unheraldic and
unheroic motto?

Rosa amorosa,
Farfalla giojosa,
Mi cantano al cuore
La gioja e l' amore.

They were the great people of this region for countless generations, the
Farfalla. They were Princes of Ventirose and Patricians of Milan. And
then the last of them was ruined at Monte Carlo, and killed himself
there, twenty-odd years ago. That is how all their gioja and amore
ended. It was the case of a butterfly literally broken upon a wheel. The
estate fell into t