for she loved Nino with
all her heart, and no one can love wholly without trusting wholly.
Therefore she put away the evil suggestion from herself, and loaded
all its burden of treachery upon Benoni.

How long she sat by the window, compelling her strained thoughts into
order, no one can tell. It might have been an hour, or more, for she
had lost the account of the hours. She was roused by a knock at the
door of her sitting-room, and at her bidding the man entered who, for
the trifling consideration of about a thousand francs, first and last
made communication possible between Hedwig and myself.

This man's name is Temistocle,--Themistocles, no less. All servants
are Themistocles, or Orestes, or Joseph, just as all gardeners are
called Antonio. Perhaps he deserves some description. He is a type,
short, wiry, and broad-shouldered, with a cunning eye, a long hooked
nose, and very plentiful black whiskers, surmounted by a perfectly
bald crown. His motions are servile to the last degree, and he
addresses everyone in authority as "excellency," on the principle that
it is better to give too much titular homage than too little. He is as
wily as a fox, and so long as you have money in your pocket, as
faithful as a hound and as silent as the grave. I perceive that these
are precisely the epithets at which the baron scoffed, saying that a
man can be praised only by comparing him with the higher animals, or
insulted by comparison with himself and his kind. We call a man a
fool, an idiot, a coward, a liar, a traitor, and many other things
applicable only to man himself. However, I will let my description
stand, for it is a very good one; and Temistocle could be induced, for
money, to adapt himself to almost any description, and he certainly
had earned, at one time or another, most of the titles I have
enumerated.

He told me, months afterwards, that when he passed through the
courtyard, on his way to Hedwig's apartment, he found Benoni seated on
the stone bench, smoking a cigarette and gazing into space, so that he
passed close before him without being noticed.

CHAPTER XIX

Temistocle closed the door, then opened it again, and looked out,
after which he finally shut it, and seemed satisfied. He advanced with
cautious tread to where Hedwig sat by the window.

"Well? What have you done?" she inquired, without looking at him. It
is a hard thing for a proud and noble girl to be in the power of a
servant. The man took N