cato Vecchio, and I confess that
unsatisfied curiosity as to the lady herself counselled it as well.
Perhaps I had done her injustice, and she was as immortally fresh and
fair as be conceived her. I was, at any rate, anxious to behold once
more the ripe enchantress who had made twenty years pass as a
twelvemonth. I repaired accordingly, one morning, to her abode, climbed
the interminable staircase, and reached her door. It stood ajar, and as
I hesitated whether to enter, a little serving-maid came clattering out
with an empty kettle, as if she had just performed some savoury errand.
The inner door, too, was open; so I crossed the little vestibule and
entered the room in which I had formerly been received. It had not its
evening aspect. The table, or one end of it, was spread for a late
breakfast, and before it sat a gentleman--an individual, at least, of the
male sex--doing execution upon a beefsteak and onions, and a bottle of
wine. At his elbow, in friendly proximity, was placed the lady of the
house. Her attitude, as I entered, was not that of an enchantress. With
one hand she held in her lap a plate of smoking maccaroni; with the other
she had lifted high in air one of the pendulous filaments of this
succulent compound, and was in the act of slipping it gently down her
throat. On the uncovered end of the table, facing her companion, were
ranged half a dozen small statuettes, of some snuff-coloured substance
resembling terra-cotta. He, brandishing his knife with ardour, was
apparently descanting on their merits.

Evidently I darkened the door. My hostess dropped liner maccaroni--into
her mouth, and rose hastily with a harsh exclamation and a flushed face.
I immediately perceived that the Signora Serafina's secret was even
better worth knowing than I had supposed, and that the way to learn it
was to take it for granted. I summoned my best Italian, I smiled and
bowed and apologised for my intrusion; and in a moment, whether or no I
had dispelled the lady's irritation, I had at least stimulated her
prudence. I was welcome, she said; I must take a seat. This was another
friend of hers--also an artist, she declared with a smile which was
almost amiable. Her companion wiped his moustache and bowed with great
civility. I saw at a glance that he was equal to the situation. He was
presumably the author of the statuettes on the table, and he knew a money-
spending _forestiere_ when he saw one. He was a small w