merely means dissipating
melancholy, getting rid of care now and then, and of everything that
bores one. That is the harmless sort."

"What they call 'harmless excitement'--yes, that is what I should like
sometimes. There are days when I feel that I must have it. It is as if
the blood went to my head, and my nerves are all on edge, and I wish
something would happen, I don't know what, but something, something!"

"I know exactly what you mean, my dear boy," said Corbario in a tone of
sympathy. "You see I am not very old myself, after all--barely
thirty--not quite, in fact. I could call myself twenty-nine if it were
not so much more respectable to be older."

"Yes. But do you mean to say that you feel just what I do now and then?"
Marcello asked the question in considerable surprise. "Do you really
know that sensation? That burning restlessness--that something like what
the earth must feel before a thunderstorm--like the air at this moment?"

Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.

"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is nothing but the
sudden wish for a little harmless excitement, nothing else in the world,
my dear boy, and it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It does not
follow that it is at all convenient to yield to it, but we feel it
because we lead such a very quiet life."

"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.

"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there are any
happier people in the world than we three, your mother, you, and I. We
have not a wish unfulfilled."

"No, except that one, when it comes."

"And that does not count in my case," answered Folco. "You see I have
had a good deal of--'harmless excitement' in my life, and I know just
what it is like, and that it is quite possible to be perfectly happy
without it. In fact, I am. But you have never had any at all, and it is
as absurd to suppose that young birds will not try to fly as that young
men will not want amusement, now and then."

"I suppose that women cannot always understand that," said Marcello,
after a moment.

"Women," replied Folco, unmoved, "do not always distinguish quite
closely between excitement that is harmless for a man and excitement
which is not. To tell the truth," he added, with a laugh, "they hardly
ever distinguish at all, and it is quite useless to talk to them about
it."

"But surely, there are exceptions?"

"Not many. That is the reason why there is a sort of f