hensible. Among the number of all these precious things there
was one rich pearl necklace which Muzio had received from the Shah of
Persia for a certain great and mysterious service; he asked Valeria's
permission to place this necklace on her neck with his own hand; it
seemed to her heavy, and as though endowed with a strange sort of warmth
... it fairly adhered to the skin. Toward evening, after dinner, as they
sat on the terrace of the villa, in the shade of oleanders and laurels,
Muzio began to narrate his adventures. He told of the distant lands
which he had seen, of mountains higher than the clouds, of rivers like
unto seas; he told of vast buildings and temples, of trees thousands of
years old, of rainbow-hued flowers and birds; he enumerated the cities
and peoples he had visited.... (their very names exhaled something
magical). All the Orient was familiar to Muzio: he had traversed Persia
and Arabia, where the horses are more noble and beautiful than all other
living creatures; he had penetrated the depths of India, where is a race
of people resembling magnificent plants; he had attained to the confines
of China and Tibet, where a living god, the Dalai Lama by name, dwells
upon earth in the form of a speechless man with narrow eyes. Marvellous
were his tales! Fabio and Valeria listened to him as though enchanted.

In point of fact, Muzio's features had undergone but little change:
swarthy from childhood, his face had grown still darker,--had been
burned beneath the rays of a more brilliant sun,--his eyes seemed more
deeply set than of yore, that was all; but the expression of that face
had become different: concentrated, grave, it did not grow animated even
when he alluded to the dangers to which he had been subjected by night
in the forests, deafened by the roar of tigers, by day on deserted roads
where fanatics lie in wait for travellers and strangle them in honour of
an iron goddess who demands human blood. And Muzio's voice had grown
more quiet and even; the movements of his hands, of his whole body, had
lost the flourishing ease which is peculiar to the Italian race.

With the aid of his servant, the obsequiously-alert Malay, he showed his
host and hostess several tricks which he had been taught by the Brahmins
of India. Thus, for example, having preliminarily concealed himself
behind a curtain, he suddenly appeared sitting in the air, with his legs
doubled up beneath him, resting the tips of his fingers ligh