rly as we ate and drank. I
believe it was very good for us. We generally made it up before
night--for the sake of beginning again with a clear conscience. Anything
served us--the weather, the soup, the colour of a horse."

"You must have led an extremely lively life," observed Orsino,
considerably amused.

"It was very well for us, Orsino. But it will not do for you. You are
not so much like your father, as he was like me at your age. We fought
with the same weapons, but you two would not, if you fought at all. We
fenced for our own amusement and we kept the buttons on the foils. You
have neither my really angelic temper nor your father's stony
coolness--he is laughing again--no matter, he knows it is true. You have
a diabolical tongue. Do not quarrel with your father for amusement,
Orsino. His calmness will exasperate you as it does me, but you will not
laugh at the right moment as I have done all my life. You will bear
malice and grow sullen and permanently disagreeable. And do not say all
the cutting things you think of, because with your disposition you will
get into serious trouble. If you have really good cause for being angry,
it is better to strike than to speak, and in such cases I strongly
advise you to strike first. Now go and amuse yourself, for you must have
had enough of our company. I do not think of any other advice to give
you on your coming of age."

Thereupon he laughed again and pushed his grandson away, evidently
delighted with the lecture he had given him. Orsino was quick to profit
by the permission and was soon in the Montevarchi ballroom, doing his
best to forget the lugubrious feast in his own honour at which he had
lately assisted.

He was not altogether successful, however. He had looked forward to the
day for many months as one of rejoicing as well as of emancipation, and
he had been grievously disappointed. There was something of ill augury,
he thought, in the appalling dulness of the guests, for they had
congratulated him upon his entry into a life exactly similar to their
own. Indeed, the more precisely similar it proved to be, the more he
would be respected when he reached their advanced age. The future
unfolded to him was not gay. He was to live forty, fifty or even sixty
years in the same round of traditions and hampered by the same net of
prejudices. He might have his romance, as his father had had before him,
but there was nothing beyond that. His father seemed perfectly satisfie