y with creased eyelids. He must have been sixty or a couple of years
more. And he was communicative. I would not go so far as to call it
garrulous--but distinctly communicative.

He had tried various climates, of Abbazia, of the Riviera, of other
places, too, he told me, but the only one which suited him was the
climate of the Gulf of Naples. The ancient Romans, who, he pointed out
to me, were men expert in the art of living, knew very well what they
were doing when they built their villas on these shores, in Baiae, in
Vico, in Capri. They came down to this seaside in search of health,
bringing with them their trains of mimes and flute-players to amuse
their leisure. He thought it extremely probable that the Romans of
the higher classes were specially predisposed to painful rheumatic
affections.

This was the only personal opinion I heard him express. It was based
on no special erudition. He knew no more of the Romans than an average
informed man of the world is expected to know. He argued from personal
experience. He had suffered himself from a painful and dangerous
rheumatic affection till he found relief in this particular spot of
Southern Europe.

This was three years ago, and ever since he had taken up his quarters
on the shores of the gulf, either in one of the hotels in Sorrento or
hiring a small villa in Capri. He had a piano, a few books: picked
up transient acquaintances of a day, week, or month in the stream of
travellers from all Europe. One can imagine him going out for his
walks in the streets and lanes, becoming known to beggars, shopkeepers,
children, country people; talking amiably over the walls to the
contadini--and coming back to his rooms or his villa to sit before the
piano, with his white hair brushed up and his thick orderly moustache,
"to make a little music for myself." And, of course, for a change
there was Naples near by--life, movement, animation, opera. A little
amusement, as he said, is necessary for health. Mimes and flute-players,
in fact. Only unlike the magnates of ancient Rome, he had no affairs
of the city to call him away from these moderate delights. He had no
affairs at all. Probably he had never had any grave affairs to attend
to in his life. It was a kindly existence, with its joys and sorrows
regulated by the course of Nature--marriages, births, deaths--ruled by
the prescribed usages of good society and protected by the State.

He was a widower; but in the months of July an