see he gets impatient. He doesn't care for reading; he is fond of
billiards, but I don't play a good enough game to be any amusement to
him. And though he sings divinely, as I told you, he sings as the birds
do,--just when the mood is on him. He does not care about music as a
science in the least. He laughed when I said so. He declared it was no
more a science than love is. Perhaps love ought to be a science too, in
a way, or else it won't last. There has been a scandal in the village,
caused by his servant Toniello. An infuriated father came up to the
house this morning about it. He is named John Best: he has one of Aunt
Carrie's biggest farms. He was in such a dreadful rage, and I had to
talk to him, because, of course, Piero couldn't understand him. Only
when I translated what he said, Piero laughed till he cried, and offered
him a cigarette, and called him "_figlio mio_," which only made Mr. John
Best purple with fury, and he went away in a greater rage than he had
been in when he came, swearing he "would do for the Papist." I have sent
for the steward. I am afraid Aunt Carrie will be terribly annoyed. It
has always been such a model village. Not a public-house near for six
miles, and all the girls such demure, quiet little maidens. The terrible
Roman valet, with his starry eyes and his mandoline, and his audacities,
has been like Mephistopheles in the opera to this secluded and innocent
little hamlet. I beg Piero to send him away; but he looks unutterably
reproachful, and declares he really cannot live without Toniello; and
what can I say?

* * * * *

_From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di
San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset._

You are quite in the wrong, my poor pet. If you were only a little
older, and ever so much wiser, you would have telegraphed to the
libraries yourself for the French books; you would have laughed at them
when he laughed, and, instead of taking Mr. John Best as a tragedy, you
would have made him into a little burlesque, which would have amused
your husband for five minutes as much as Gyp or Jean Richepin. I begin
to think I should have married your Roman prince, and you should have
married my good, dull George, whom a perverse destiny has shoved into
diplomacy. Your Roman scandalizes you, and my George bores me. Such is
marriage, my dear, all the world over. What is the old story? That Jove
broke all the walnuts, and each half is always