ving money for making war possible and that is not
earning an honest living. There must be no more war. Soldiers must be
abolished--obliterated."

"Obliterated" woke the corporal up thoroughly. It was all very well to
talk about annihilating the House of Lords, which he had understood to
mean demolishing some palace, but the army was a body of men, and if we
were to begin obliterating them--why, he had friends in the army and it
would never do, because--and so on, with interruptions by Ivanhoe, until
Filomena began to grow restless about washing up and I began to take my
leave. I thanked her for her charming hospitality and the corporal and
Ivanhoe accompanied me back to the Albergo della Madonna. On the way I
said:

"Please tell me, Corporal, you say that Filomena is your fidanzata, but
it seems to me you are as good as--"

"We are not married," he interrupted, "but she has consented to become
the mother of my children."

"Do I understand that you have already taken steps to ensure the
attainment of that happy result?"

He said he had, and that she was coming home with him in order that the
baby might be born there. His people, who understood the sincerity of
his nature and the purity of his motives--

"Ah yes, indeed," interrupted Ivanhoe, "my brother has a heart of gold
and we are all satisfied with his conduct."

"But Filomena's family," continued the corporal, "are suspicious and
unfriendly and dissatisfied. Her adorata mamma and all her aunts and
female cousins wept when she left home, and they are still weeping. But
what else could we do? She was getting ill after waiting so long and
could not--"

"Yes," interrupted Ivanhoe, "she was becoming like Ettorina, and my poor
brother also was unhappy."

They admitted that the situation, though the best possible, was not
ideal. The corporal has to sleep at the caserma and pretend to the
authorities that he is a free bachelor, he can only visit the mother of
his future children in his spare time. And this regrettable state of
things had arisen in consequence, or partly in consequence, of my respect
for law and order. I did not put it like that to him. I pointed out
that if I had sent the 4000 francs I should have been obliged to deny
myself the pleasure of coming to see him in Sicily. He concurred and
thanked me for my consideration. His experience of life had already
taught him that the same money cannot be spent on two different objects,
and h