you can lie as snug as fleas in a blanket. Oh--er--but
excuse me--" He checked himself and stood rubbing his chin, with a
dubious glance at the Princess.

"Indeed, sir," she put in, smoothing down at her peasant-skirt,
"I think you first found me lodging upon a bare rock, and even in
this new dress it hardly becomes me to be more fastidious."

"I was thinking less of the lodgings, Princess, than of the company:
though, to be sure, the girls are very good-hearted, and Donna Julia,
our _prima amorosa_, makes a most discreet _duenna_, off the boards.
There is Badcock too--il signore Badcocchio: give Badcock a hint, and
he will diffuse a most permeating respectability. For the young
ladies who dwell at the entrance of the court, over the archway, I
won't answer. My acquaintance with them has not passed beyond an
interchange of winks: but we might send Badcock to expostulate with
them."

"You are not dealing with a child, sir," said the Princess, with a
look at me and a somewhat heightened colour. "Be assured that I
shall have eyes only for what I choose to see."

Mr. Fett bowed. "As for the lodgings, I can guarantee them.
They lie on the edge of a small Jew quarter--not the main _ghetto_--
and within a stone's-throw of the alleged birthplace of Columbus; if
that be a recommendation. Actually they are rated in the weavers'
quarter, the burgh of San Stefano, between the old and new walls, a
little on the left of the main street as you go up from Sant' Andrea
towards Porticello, by the second turning beyond the Olive Gate."

"I thank you," I interrupted, "but at a reasonable pace we might
arrive there before you have done giving us the direction."

"My loquacity, sir, did you understand it," said Mr. Fett, with an
air of fine reproach, "springs less from the desire to instruct than
from the ebullience of my feelings at so happy a rencounter."

"Well, that's very handsomely said," I acknowledged. "Oh, sir, I
have a deal to tell, and to hear! But we will talk anon.
Meanwhile"--he touched my arm as he led the way, and I fell into step
beside him--"permit me to note a change in the lady since I last had
the pleasure of meeting her--a distinct lessening of _hauteur_--a
touch of (shall I say?) womanliness. Would it be too much to ask if
you are running away with her?"

"It would," said I. "As a matter of fact she is in Genoa to seek her
brother, the Prince Camillo."

"Nevertheless," he insisted, and with an imp