ed him from caring for the
outer world, and he now realised what the outer world was. He fancied
to himself what his first three months of brilliant success might have
been, in Rome and Paris, if he had not been bound by some strong tie
of the heart to keep him serious and thoughtful. He thought of the
women who had smiled upon him, and of the invitations that had
besieged him, and of the consternation that had manifested itself when
he declared his intention of retiring to Rome, after his brilliant
engagement in Paris, without signing any further contract.

Then came the rapid journey, the excitement, the day in Rome, the
difficulties of finding Fillettino; and at last he was here, sitting
by the roadside, and waiting for it to be time to carry into execution
the bold scheme he had set before him. His conscience was at rest, for
he now felt that he had done all that the most scrupulous honour could
exact of him. He had returned in the midst of his success to make an
honourable offer of marriage, and he had been refused,--because he was
a plebeian, forsooth! And he knew also that the woman he loved was
breaking her heart for him.

What wonder that he set his teeth, and said to himself that she should
be his, at any price! Nino has no absurd ideas about the ridicule that
attaches to loving a woman, and taking her if necessary. He has not
been trained up in the heart of the wretched thing they call society,
which ruined me long ago. What he wants he asks for, like a child, and
if it is refused, and his good heart tells him that he has a right to
it, he takes it like a man, or like what a man was in the old time
before the Englishman discovered that he is an ape. Ah, my learned
colleagues, we are not so far removed from the ancestral monkey but
that there is serious danger of our shortly returning to that
primitive and caudal state! And I think that my boy and the Prussian
officer, as they sat on their beasts and bowed, and smiled, and
offered to fight each other, or to shake hands, each desiring to
oblige the other, like a couple of knights of the old ages, were a
trifle farther removed from our common gorilla parentage than some of
us.

But it grew dark, and Nino caught his mule and rode slowly back to the
town, wondering what would happen before the sun rose on the other
side of the world. Now, lest you fail to understand wholly how the
matter passed, I must tell you a little of what took place during the
time that