he shook with rage.

"He is the lord of the duchess, his mistress--what a lucky fellow!"
said Luigi. "When he's dog at the gates no one can approach her. When he
isn't, you can fancy what!"--"He's only a mechanical contrivance; he's
not a man," said Beppo. "He's the principal flea-catcher of the palace,"
said Luigi--"here he is all day, and at night the devil knows where he
hunts."--Luigi hopped in a half-circle round the exacerbated Jacob, and
finally provoked an assault that gave an opening to Beppo. They all
ran in, Luigi last. Jacob chased Beppo up the stairs, lost him, and
remembered what he had said of the letter borne by Luigi, for whom
he determined to lie in waiting. "Better two in there than one," he
thought. The two courted his Aennchen openly; but Luigi, as the bearer
of an amorous letter from the signor of quality, who could be no other
than signor Antonio-Pericles, was the one to be intercepted. Like other
jealous lovers, Jacob wanted to read Aennchen's answer, to be cured of
his fatal passion for the maiden, and on this he set the entire force of
his mind.

Running up by different staircases, Beppo and Luigi came upon Aennchen
nearly at the same time. She turned a cold face on Beppo, and requested
Luigi to follow her. Astonished to see him in such favour, Beppo was
ready to provoke the quarrel before the kiss when she returned; but
she said that she had obeyed her mistress's orders, and was obeying the
duchess in refusing to speak of them, or of anything relating to them.
She had promised him an interview in that little room leading into the
duchess's boudoir. He pressed her to conduct him. "Ah; then it's not for
me you come," she said. Beppo had calculated that the kiss would open
his way to the room, and the quarrel disembarrass him of his pretty
companion when there. "You have come to listen to conversation again,"
said Aennchen. "Ach! the fool a woman is to think that you Italians have
any idea except self-interest when you, when you... talk nonsense to
us. Go away, if you please. Good-evening." She dropped a curtsey with a
surly coquetry, charming of its kind. Beppo protested that the room
was dear to him because there first he had known for one blissful
half-second the sweetness of her mouth.

"Who told you that persons who don't like your mistress are going to
talk in there?" said Aennchen.

"You," said Beppo.

Aennchen drew up in triumph: "And now will you pretend that you didn't
come up her