of view in
regard to order and punctuality. Ruggiero's experience of fine gentlemen
was limited indeed, but he could not believe that they all behaved like
San Miniato, whose temper was apparently as changeable as his tastes.
Sometimes he went to bed at nine o'clock and rose at dawn. Sometimes on
the other hand he got up at seven in the evening and went to bed by
daylight. Sometimes everything Ruggiero did was right, and sometimes
everything was wrong. There were days when the Count could not be
induced to move from the Marchesa di Mola's terrace between noon and
midnight or later, and again there were days when he went off in his
boat in the morning and did not return until the last stragglers on the
terrace of the hotel were ready to go to bed. He was irregular even in
playing, which was after all his chief pastime. Possibly he knew of
reasons why it should be good to gamble on one day and not upon
another. Then he had his fits of amateur seamanship, when he would
insist upon taking the tiller from Ruggiero's hand. The latter, on such
occasions, remained perched upon the stern in case of an emergency. San
Miniato was a thorough landsman and never understood why the wind always
seemed to change, or die away, or do something unexpected so soon as he
began to steer the boat. From time to time Ruggiero, by way of a mild
hint, held up his palm to the breeze, but San Miniato did not know what
the action meant. Ruggiero trimmed the sails to suit the course chosen
by his master as well as possible, but straightway the boat was up in
the wind again if she had been going free, or was falling off if the
tacks were down and the sheets well aft. San Miniato was one of those
men who seem quite incapable of doing anything sensible from the moment
they leave the land till they touch it again, when their normal common
sense returns, and they once more become human beings.

On the other hand nothing frightened him, though he could not swim a
stroke. More than once Ruggiero allowed him almost to upset the boat in
a squall, and more than once, when, steering himself, and when there was
a fresh breeze, drove her till the seas broke over the bows, and the
green water came in over the lee gunwale--just to see whether the Count
would change colour. In this, however, he was disappointed. San
Miniato's temper might change and his tastes might be as variable as the
moon, or the weather, but his face rarely expressed anything of what he
felt, an