alian sun. Often it came to table so shorn of
its pristine freshness that not the hungriest of us could condone its
odor. One sultry night everybody's plate went away untouched, save two
or three. Flesh and fowl were "high,"--yea, "twice high," as the British
gourmet prefers his game. St. John's plate was _not_ sent away. That
ideal being was served three times, after which he rose and helped
himself from the side-table, remarking half apologetically as he did so,
"The cook has really surpassed himself to-day!"
"Ja! ja!" echoed our Teutons.
We saw our St. John next morning sucking raw eggs before his coffee.
"Because the _nourriture_ is poor. I do it to strengthen me," he
explained.
"When I am well I eat all I can hold," he confidentially imparted to the
_table-d'hote_. "When I am ill I eat more than I do when I am well."
One of our _pensionnaires_ was a swarthy Brazilian, living upon a
colossal and mysteriously-begotten fortune and spending what remained to
him of life upon the Mediterranean shores. He knew every _pensione_ of
the whole wide region, and in strident, barbaric tones--continually
reminding us of the savage aboriginal blood betrayed by narrow eyes and
high cheek-bones--flooded our _table-d'hote_ with the gossip of
_pensioni_ at Capri, Castellamare, Pompeii, Sorrento, and Salerno,--the
giddiness of all the widows, the cunning of the young girls, the
wickedness of the wives, and the barefaced or clever intriguing of
husband-hunting mammas. All that year, as we quietly slipped from one
Mediterranean _pensione_ to another, we met and recognized the heroes
and heroines of our Brazilian's _chroniques scandaleuses_, and we
breathed many a thanksgiving that we were slipping east while he slipped
west and thus were not known of name and evil fame in advance of our
coming.
Our Brazilian was a devout Catholic, which led to his giving great
offence at our table. Nobody could endure to pass him anything or to
take anything from him, and the hideous bird-of-prey-like rattling of
his right hand at any service turned many a delicate appetite away and
made our Brazilian of almost Gorgon-like effect upon all new-comers. The
finger-nails of his right hand were vowed to the Virgin: for two years
they had been uncut, and now, like fiendish claws, extended two inches
beyond the withered and dusky fingers.
"Why am I not liked by _ces belles dames_?" he asked one day. "They
never ask me to their excursions; they se
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