here was one bad
thing among a lot of good ones?"

The German with the green hat, who understood something of the
conversation, was indignant at Caesar's irreverent ideas. He asked him
if he understood Latin, and Caesar told him no, and then, in a strange
gibberish, half Latin and half Italian, he let loose a series of facts,
dates, and numbers. Then he asserted that all artistic things of great
merit were German: Greece. Rome, Gothic architecture, the Italian
Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, Velazquez, all German.

The snub-nosed young person, with his cape and his green hat with its
cock-feather, did not let a mouse escape from his German mouse-trap.

The data of the befeathered German were too much for Caesar, and he took
his leave of the painters.

XVII. EVIL DAYS

Accompanied by Kennedy, Caesar called repeatedly on the most auspicious
members of the French clerical element living in Rome, and found persons
more cultivated than among the rough Spanish monks; but, as was natural,
nobody gave him any useful information offering the possibility of his
putting his financial talents to the proof.

"Something must turn up," he used to say to himself, "and at the least
opening we will dive into the work."

Caesar kept gathering notes about people who had connections in Spain
with the Black party in Rome; he called several times on Father
Herreros, despite his uncle's prohibition, and succeeded in getting the
monk to write to the Marquesa de Montsagro, asking if there were no
means of making Caesar Moneada, Cardinal Fort's nephew, Conservative
Deputy for her district.

The Marquesa wrote back that it was impossible; the Conservative Deputy
for the district was very popular and a man with large properties there.

When Holy Week was over, Laura and the Countess Brenda and her daughter
decided to spend a while at Florence, and invited Caesar to accompany
them; but he was quite out of harmony with the Brenda lady, and said
that he had to stay on in Rome.

A few days later Mme. Dawson and her daughters left, and the San
Martinos and the Marchesa Sciacca; and an avalanche of English people
and Germans, armed with their red Baedekers, took the hotel by storm.
Susanna Marchmont had gone to spend some days at Corfu.

In less than a week Caesar remained alone, knowing nobody in the hotel,
and despite his believing that he was going to be perfectly indifferent
about this, he felt deserted and sad. The influence of