The young Cavaliere from Bari
(according to Pasquale; but Pasquale is, of course, an accomplished
liar) went on arranging his tie, settling his hat before the glass, and
meantime he spoke just loud enough to be heard by the Count. He spoke
through his teeth with the most insulting venom of contempt and gazing
straight into the mirror.

"Ah! So you had some gold on you--you old liar--you old birba--you
furfante! But you are not done with me yet."

The fiendishness of his expression vanished like lightning, and he
lounged out of the cafe with a moody, impassive face.

The poor Count, after telling me this last episode, fell back trembling
in his chair. His forehead broke into perspiration. There was a wanton
insolence in the spirit of this outrage which appalled even me. What it
was to the Count's delicacy I won't attempt to guess. I am sure that if
he had been not too refined to do such a blatantly vulgar thing as dying
from apoplexy in a cafe, he would have had a fatal stroke there and
then. All irony apart, my difficulty was to keep him from seeing
the full extent of my commiseration. He shrank from every excessive
sentiment, and my commiseration was practically unbounded. It did not
surprise me to hear that he had been in bed a week. He had got up to
make his arrangements for leaving Southern Italy for good and all.

And the man was convinced that he could not live through a whole year in
any other climate!

No argument of mine had any effect. It was not timidity, though he did
say to me once: "You do not know what a Camorra is, my dear sir. I am
a marked man." He was not afraid of what could be done to him.
His delicate conception of his dignity was defiled by a degrading
experience. He couldn't stand that. No Japanese gentleman, outraged in
his exaggerated sense of honour, could have gone about his preparations
for Hara-kiri with greater resolution. To go home really amounted to
suicide for the poor Count.

There is a saying of Neapolitan patriotism, intended for the information
of foreigners, I presume: "See Naples and then die." Vedi Napoli e poi
mori. It is a saying of excessive vanity, and everything excessive was
abhorrent to the nice moderation of the poor Count. Yet, as I was seeing
him off at the railway station, I thought he was behaving with singular
fidelity to its conceited spirit. Vedi Napoli! . . . He had seen it!
He had seen it with startling thoroughness--and now he was going to
his grave. He