CHAPTER III.

A LITTLE PLOT.

The next morning the girls set their possessions in order, brought out the few books they had thought worth while to take with them, and the little ornaments they had bought by the way, and scattered them about the rooms.

Among these objects was a large and populous photograph-book, which Isabel displayed to the Signora, introducing the strangers to her, and recalling to her memory the friends whose faces had changed beyond her recognition.

“This is Louis Marion,” she said; “and I shouldn’t be surprised if we were to see him here before long. We must introduce him to you—that is, if he should call on us. He used to be a great friend of ours, but, for some reason or other, he grew a little cool before we left, and didn’t even come to say good-by. I never could understand what was the matter. May be it wasn’t anything; and we were in such a bustle of preparation and taking leave of everybody that there was no chance to ask for explanations.”

The Signora looked with interest at this picture; for the person, though a stranger, had been much in her mind of late. His looks pleased her. It was a good face, not too handsome, but with fine eyes, and an appearance of strength softened here and there by some delicate finish. She had hoped most decidedly that he would come, and a letter which she had received that morning made her desire his coming more than before.

“I have no patience with Isabel Vane,” the writer declared energetically. “She is so wrapped up in herself, and so insensitive, that delicacy is quite thrown away on her. She is one of those persons who think no one can talk except those who will interrupt and talk loudly, and so, with the greatest apparent unconsciousness, she monopolizes all the attention of their friends, and sets Bianca aside as if she were a nobody. It never occurs to her that a gentleman may admire her sister; and yet Bianca is very much admired, in an odd, provoking kind of way. Most people, you know, attend to the loudest talker; and in the presence of Isabel her sister was sometimes almost neglected, even by those who were constantly thinking of her. Anybody with two eyes could see that Louis Marion liked her, and I am sure she thought he did, and that there was a sort of tacit understanding between them. They didn’t talk much together, but I’ve seen them manage to be near each other, and where they could hear each other’s voices, and one of them never left the company without glancing back and receiving a glance in return. At length, I don’t know how it came about, but Isabel seemed to take his attentions to herself, and may be she said something about him to Bianca. Then a coldness grew up between her and Marion, and a thousand little complications helped it on, and he began to absent himself from the house, and Bianca pretended not to see him unless he came to speak to her, and so they separated, and all in consequence of the stupid conceit of a girl whom I could shake with a good will.”

We need not quote the letter further, though the writer, in the fulness of her heart, added several pages of amplifications on the theme, all which the Signora had read and re-read.

Bianca was arranging books on the table when the photograph-book was opened. She continued her employment a few minutes; but when they approached the page where Louis Marion’s picture was she turned away, and when his name was mentioned she was leaning out of the window, much interested apparently, in something going on in the street.

“Whose photographs are these?” the Signora asked.

“Oh! they are all family friends,” was the reply. “I might say they are mine, for I asked for the most of them. Neither papa nor Bianca would have thought of it. But they belong to the firm.”

The Signora prided herself on being a rather exceptionally honest and straightforward woman; but at this moment a very complicated little plot was forming itself in her mind. She could guess with how tender an interest Bianca might regard this photograph, but how impossible it might be for her to show anything but the utmost indifference to it, and how, sometimes, it might be a pleasure to contemplate it when she would not venture to do so. She could guess that it had been really given for her sake, though she had not been the one to ask for it, and what faint bloom of a downcast smile the gentleman might have seen in her face when it was put in its place.

“It is a darkish face, and the least in the world too small for the place,” the Signora said; “and so is this one next it.”

A word of cool depreciation is enough to take the lustre from a star with most people, and Miss Isabel Vane was no exception. If one abuses a person’s friends or ridicules their possessions, they may be stirred to anger; but that dispassionate, slighting way gives the deadliest of shocks to friendship.

“It scarcely does him justice,” the young lady owned; “and, as you say, the photographs are a little too small for their places. I must ask Marion for another when he comes, if he should come. The other I do not care about. He was simply put in to fill up. I must buy four more to put in these vacant places.”

“Stay!” the Signora said. “I have some which are worth more than merely to fill the vacant places; they will adorn the book.”

She brought from her room a little box of card-photographs, and began to select from them. “Here is the Holy Father on his knees before what seems to be the statue of St. Joseph holding the Child; and here are four cardinals and a patriarch. See how well they fit in! Do you mind my taking these two out?”

“Oh! no.” Isabel was too much pleased with these notable additions to her gallery to care for the two indifferent acquaintances who made room for them. But as the Signora carelessly, and quite as a matter of course, tossed the two cards into the box where their substitutes had been, she saw that Bianca had turned from the window and was regarding them. Even in the half glance she cast she could know that the turning had been sudden, and that the girl’s head was held very high.

The Signora rose. “Well, children, if we are going to _Santa Croce_ we must start in an hour. It is a great _festa_ there, and I think there will be a crowd. Didn’t Bianca promise to braid my hair in a wonderful new way? I remembered it this morning, and have only given my locks a twist about the comb, and they are on the point of falling about my shoulders in the most romantic manner.”

She would not seem to see the faint shade of disturbance with which Bianca followed her from the room. She well knew that in seeming to slight the one that tender heart held dear she had chilled the heart toward herself; but that was not to last long, neither the pain nor the displeasure. She slipped a white dressing-sack on, seated herself before the long mirror, and shook her hair down. “Now, my dear, make me as beautiful as you like,” she said; and, taking the box of photographs she had brought with her on her lap, began to turn them over. “You had better take charge of these,” she remarked, laying the two at the top aside before beginning her survey of the others.

Bianca said nothing, but her hands, combing out the long, fair locks, were a little unsteady, and her face blushed in the mirror, a swift, startled blush.

“Three strands, my dear,” the Signora said. “I never fancied a braid of any other sort for the hair. More than three strands always seems to me like a market-basket on the head of a market-woman. I always thought very elaborate hair-dressing vulgar and unbecoming. I like the way yours is done this morning.”

Bianca’s hair was in a few large satin-smooth curls tied back with a ribbon of so fresh a green as to be almost gold, and the Signora knew that, after a careful brushing, five minutes had accomplished all the rest. There were no curl-papers nor hot irons; it was only to brush the tress about the pretty fore-finger, and it dropped in glossy coil on coil.

“Many people do not like curls,” Bianca said. “But it seems a pity to straighten out and braid curly hair. I think nature meant such hair to have its own way, just like vine tendrils, though the use may not be so evident.”

She spoke with a certain quietness, not cold, yet not cordial, and kept her eyes fixed on the braid her skilful fingers were weaving rapidly.

The Signora took up the photographs she had laid aside, glanced at one, and dropped it, then looked at the other for some time in silence. “What fine, earnest eyes he has!” she said at length. “There is even something reproachful in their expression, as if he were looking at one who had doubted him. I do not doubt you, sir. On the contrary, I am disposed to have the utmost confidence in you. Moreover, I shall be happy to see you in Rome.”

She laid the photograph carefully on the other, and, closing her eyes, resigned herself entirely to the care of her pretty handmaiden. There was silence for a few minutes while the braids were being finished; then she felt a soft hand slip down each cheek with a caressing touch. “Open your eyes, _carissima mia_,” said a voice as soft, “and tell me how these are to be arranged. Will you have them looped or in a crown?”

The thin ice was quite melted; and when the hair-dressing was finished, Bianca went off to her own room, bearing the treasure that had been put into her possession in such an artful manner. “It makes me feel very twisted to act in such a crooked way; but if it is a crooked it isn’t a dark way. And the dear child is so happy!” the Signora thought.

A shower was passing to the south when our party came out of the church at noon, and the sun was so veiled that they sent their carriage on, and walked from _Santa Croce_ to St. John Lateran. They could see a pearly stream of water pouring down far away from a dark spot in the sky to a dark spot on the earth; but the clouds over their heads were as tender and delicate as the shadows of maidenhair ferns about a fountain. They lingered till every one had passed them, and, when they came to the last mulberry-tree of the beautiful avenue, there was left only a _contadino_ lounging on the stone bench there. He was a spectacle of faded rags and superb contentment, and seemed to have neither desire nor intention to leave the place for hours; but when he saw them look longingly at the seat, he rose, saluted them with an indescribably shabby hat, in which were stuck three fresh roses, and relinquished the bench to them.

Bianca sighed with delight as she glanced about, but said nothing. The others seemed disposed to talk.

“I heard this morning, Signora, what made me understand your admiration for the Italian language,” Mr. Vane said. “While you three were in the church I went outside the door, and presently, as I stood there, I heard two men talking behind me. Of course I did not understand a word they said, but I listened attentively. I never heard such exquisite spoken sounds in my life. The questions and replies made me think of the beautiful incised wreaths and sprigs on your candelabra. There wasn’t a syllable blurred, as we constantly hear in our own language; but I am sure every word was pronounced perfectly. When the two seemed to be going, I looked round and saw two Capuchin monks with bare ankles, and robes faded out to a dull brick-color.”

“Those same faded robes may cover very accomplished men,” the Signora said. “Some of them are fine preachers. I wish we had more preaching in Rome. One very seldom hears a sermon. The first one I heard made the same impression on me, as to the language, that the talk of these monks has made on you. I did not understand, but I was charmed. It reminded me of—Landor, wasn’t it? writing of Porson:

“‘So voluble, so eloquent, You little heeded what he meant.’

That was in St. Philip Neri’s Church.”

“Dulness is inexcusable in a Catholic preacher in any language,” Mr. Vane said. “If they should not have much talent of their own, they have such a wealth to draw from—all the beautiful legends and customs, and the grand old authors, and the lives of the saints. A dull Protestant preacher has the Bible, it is true; but, as a rule, I find that only the eloquent ones use that source of wealth freely, or know how to use it. One of the most eloquent Catholic preachers I ever heard used to make his strongest hits by simply refraining from speech. I recollect one sermon of his where he spoke of St. Augustine, whom I thought he was going to describe, but whom he made appear more brilliant by not describing. ‘His genius,’ he began, then stopped, seemed to search for words, at last threw his head back and clasped his hands. ‘Oh! the genius of St. Augustine,’ he exclaimed. Of course the tribute was more splendid than the most rolling period could have been. Nearly all his effective climaxes were like that—noble words breaking up into silence, like a Roman arch into a Gothic.”

“You will have to renounce your Gothic, Bianca,” the Signora said; “at least, while you are in Rome. You won’t even want to see it here, and you may lose your taste for it as church architecture. I sometimes think I have, though I was once enthusiastic about it. Now the single column or the massive pier, with the round arch above, seems to me the perfect expression of a perfect and serene faith. It is a following of the sky-shape. The complications and subtilty of the Gothic are more like the searching for truth of an aspiring and dissatisfied soul. When I go from under the noble arches and cupolas of _Santa Maria Maggiore_ to the church of _St. Alphonsus Liguori_, just beyond it, I receive an impression of fretfulness and unrest.”

“I should be sorry to give up _Notre Dame de Paris_ and the two churches at Rouen,” Bianca murmured half absently, her soft, bright eyes gathering in all the beauty within their ken.

Isabel was differently employed. She was busy noting facts in a little plethoric book with yellow covers and an elastic strap that she always carried in her pocket. “Do you know how long and how wide this open space between the two basilicas is?” she asked of the Signora, holding her lead-pencil suspended.

“Oh! it is long enough for a nice walk, you see, and broad enough to see everything at the other side without bumping your eyes. That is the city wall opposite, you know.”

“I’d like to know how many acres there are,” Isabel said to herself. “I believe I could measure it by my eyes. Let me see! It’s a foot to that stone. Five and a half feet make a rod, pole, or perch. Five and a half that distance would go to the next tree. A rod, then, from me to the tree. Now for a rood! Sixteen and a half—no! How I do forget! Three barley-corns make one inch, twelve inches make a foot, five and a half feet make a rod, pole, or perch, sixteen and a half rods, poles, or—bah! that isn’t it. Signora, will you be so good as to tell me how many rods make a rood?—that is, if it is rods that they make roods of. I used to know it, but there’s a hitch somewhere.”

“How should I know, my dear?” asked the Signora with mild surprise.

“Oh! don’t measure things, Bell!” pleaded her sister. “Remember London Tower.”

For Miss Vane had presumed to ask the superb “beef-eater” who escorted them through the Tower how thick might be the walls, the solidity of which he was enlarging upon, and the cool stare with which he drew the eyes of the whole party upon her, and the gently sarcastic “I do not know; I have never measured them,” with which he replied, had silenced her for the whole afternoon. “That was because I had asked something he could not answer,” she said, in telling the story. “And his manner was so imposing that it was hours before I could rid myself of the impression that I had put a very absurd and improper question. He didn’t refuse sixpence, though, for a piece of ivy from Beauchamp Tower,” she added, shrugging her shoulders.

“Bell,” whispered her sister, “I’ll tell you about the rods and roods, if you won’t measure any more.” Then, having received the promise, she explained the “hitch,” which has doubtless left its little tangle on many a youthful memory.

A woman with a white handkerchief on her head came along, and beckoned to the ragged man with the roses, who was still lounging near, and the two went off together.

“Did you notice how she beckoned?” the Signora asked. “I always notice that here. They beckon as if indicating the feet, the palm of the hand being downward, the fingers toward the ground. We beckon with the palm and fingers upward, indicating the head. It used to confuse me, and I fancied myself sent away with a refusal when I was invited to enter. You will have to learn their signs. A certain shrug and raising of the eyebrows mean no. Another no—an odious one to me—is to wag to and fro the uplifted forefinger of the right hand. This is nearly always accompanied by a compression or puckering up of the mouth. But, my dear friends, it is time for luncheon. Shall we go?”

They rose slowly, and slowly strolled across the open space where art and nature lived peacefully together. No busy hands and spades uprooted the plots of wild-flowers, infantile little pink convolvuli, snowy daisies, and all their blue and yellow kin, that had sprung up here and there in the gravelled plain, or the detached tiny plants that make each its own solitude, spreading its small leaves out over the pebbles, and raising its delicate head freely, as if to induce the passer-by to pause and admire for once the exquisite grace of the weeds he despised.

“I wonder if any one but Ruskin ever stopped to look at weeds!” the Signora said. “It was he, I think, taught me. I first thought of it on seeing an illustration in _Modern Painters_. It was a bit of weed-covered earth seen close, as one would see it when lying on the ground—only a little tangle of leaves and grasses; but, touched by his pen and pencil, its beauty was revealed.”

“I sometimes think,” Bianca said, “that it is a mercy we cannot see all the beauty there is about us; for, if we did, we should do nothing but stand and stare for ever.”

“One might do worse than stand and stare at beauty for ever,” her father replied. “I’ve no great opinion of business.”

She slipped her hand in his arm before answering, knowing that inaction was a subject that always found him a little sensitive. “That depends, you know,” she said. “When the business is to make your tea or hem your handkerchief, why it wouldn’t do for me to be going into trances.”

Isabel took his other arm. “But when the business is measuring places for the pleasure of knowing and telling how large they are, or when it is taking the census, or any of those countings of units, then he despises it.”

“When the business is poking a nose in other people’s business, I certainly object to it,” he said.

Walking along, he drew the two fair hands that clung to him into his own, and clasped them together against his breast, smiling down into the girls’ upturned faces; and for a moment the three, in their mutual affection and confidence, forgot the Signora. She walked on in front of them, her eyes cast down, and seemed to desire to remain apart. A silence fell upon them all—perhaps a sense of the silence about them, or perhaps that silence that always follows an expression of deep and tender affection, as when through the light and varied chat of a company is heard the tone of a musical instrument, and all the talk ceases for a moment; or, it may be, some touch from within or from without had reminded them that it was the day of the Holy Cross.

The drive home was very quiet, the Signora pointing out now and then some object of superlative interest as they passed it. “This is St. Clement’s, an ancient church over a still more ancient church. Mustn’t it be delightful to go digging under your house some day to repair a drain, or do some such thing, and presently come across the arch of a buried door, then, digging farther, find the whole door, then a mosaic pavement and a column of verde-antique, and so on, till a whole temple is revealed where you expected to find only earth and stones? Some such thing happened here. There is the Roman Forum a little beyond. Need I introduce this ruin to you?”

She pointed to the Colosseum, and then left them to their reflections. “Drive through the _Via della Croce Bianca_,” she said to the coachman, “and under the _Arco dei_ _Pontani_. Then pass _Santa Maria in Monti_, and go up _Via de’ Santa Pudentiana_.”

She saw them look eagerly at the beautiful fragments of Pallas Minerva and Mars Ultor she had chosen the route to show them; but they asked no questions, and she volunteered no explanations.

When they reached home the windows were all closed, and the curtains and _persiane_ half drawn for coolness, and there was such a fragrance in the rooms that they all exclaimed. Every tall vase was crowded full of roses pink and yellow, and every little one held a bunch of deep purple violets.

“Could any one leave a prettier card?” the Signora asked, displaying her treasures. “When I find heaps of violets and roses in the spring, I always know who has been here during my absence. It is Mr. Coleman,” naming her bachelor friend of the semi-weekly cup of tea. “I bespeak for him a kind place in your regards. He is faithful, honest, obliging, and refined. I am under obligations to him for many kindnesses.”

“Marion says that violets are the Mayflowers of Italy,” Isabel remarked; “that they come as plentifully at the same time, and are sold as universally, as the trailing arbutus in New England.”

“And see what a deep blue they are!” the Signora said, leading the conversation away from Marion. “These came from the Villa Borghese. I know by the color. Oh! the fields are full of flowers now. You will, perhaps, see some this evening. There are almost always a few people come in this night of the week—people who never find me at any other time. It isn’t a reception, you know. I don’t bind myself. Among them will be your Italian teacher; so you can arrange when to begin studying. I sent him a note this morning. And, stay! Apropos of violets, I have something lovely to show you.”

She opened a little case that the servant had given her as she entered. “These were left while we were out. I had ordered some changes to be made in them. See! they are the Borghese violets set in dew and petrified.”

The case contained a brooch, a pair of bracelets and sleeve-buttons, all of plain and highly polished silver, in each of which was set a large, deep-purple amethyst.

“Why did I never think of a silver setting?” Bianca exclaimed. “I always admired amethysts till they were set; then I found them spoilt. It was the ugly purple and yellow contrast. These are lovely, and just suit you, _Signora mia_. How I wish I could wear such things!”

“And why can you not?” Mr. Vane asked, with all the simplicity of a man who can admire results without understanding what produces them.

“Because they would make me look like a starless twilight,” the girl replied. “I should be obliged to paint my cheeks if I put on such colors. Poor me! I could wear only rubies, or opals, or diamonds, perhaps emeralds set in diamonds.”

Her father’s face assumed that sad and troubled expression a man’s face always wears when one he loves wishes for something out of his power to give. “Are you not rather young, my dear, to wear much jewelry?” he asked doubtfully.

“He thinks I am pining for trinkets,” she said smilingly. “Certainly, papa, I am altogether too young, and am, moreover, disinclined to wear it. Don’t look so sad about it! My ribbons and flowers satisfy me quite. I shall beg some rosebuds of the Signora for this evening, and you shall see how much prettier they will be than rubies, besides having perfume, which rubies have not.”

Isabel had arranged the bracelets around her neck, and fastened the brooch in her lace ruffle.

“They do make one look three shades darker,” she said, and sighed deeply in taking them off. “I would like to go dressed in jewels from head to foot,” she added.

But, as Isabel was always sighing to possess every beautiful thing she saw, and, if it were possible, would have had the Vatican for her abode and St. Peter’s for a private chapel, nobody took her longings very much to heart; the less so, moreover, as she managed to live a very gay and happy life in spite of those unsatisfied longings.

Other pretty things had come in during their morning’s absence: a pile of books, old copies of the Italian poets newly bound over in white vellum with red edges to the leaves, a pile of Roman photographs which were to be sent to America, and a collection of little squares of marbles, porphyries, and alabasters, a stone rainbow, destined also for America.

“But we need photographs in Rome,” the Signora said. “Looking at them, we discover a thousand beauties which we missed when we saw the original.”

A strange croaking sound drew the attention of the girls to the windows, and they saw a little caravan of crates carried past on carts, going from the railway station to the great markets of the city. Out of the holes in these crates protruded heads and necks of every sort of fowl—turkeys, hens, ducks, and pigeons. The poor wretches, huddled and crowded together, seemed to know that they were on their way to execution, and to implore the pity of the bystanders.

Bianca pressed her lips together and said nothing; Isabel leaned out and contemplated them with a smile. “Those dear turkeys!” she said with the greatest affection.

“You like them?” the Signora asked, rather surprised that any one should choose pets so grotesque.

“Yes, immensely!” was the reply. “They’re so nice roasted.”

And then, obliterating this painful and awkward reminder of what lay under the surface of their daily comforts, came a piercingly-sweet chorus of trumpets, twenty trumpets playing together. A regiment was passing, going from a camp in one part of the city to a camp in another part. The men were dressed in gray linen, and, in the distance, were hardly to be distinguished from the street, and their bearing was not very soldier-like; but the wild and sunny music gave a soul and meaning to them, and, rising through the hot and silent noon, stirred even the most languid pulses.

“War will never be done away with till trumpets are abolished,” Mr. Vane said. “I have no doubt that even I should make a very good fighter if I had a band of them in full blast at my elbow while the battle lasted. It wouldn’t do for them to stop, though. Fancy a charge for which no trumpet sounded! It would no more go off, you know, than a gun would without powder. Why doesn’t somebody take care of that child?” he concluded abruptly.

For a soiled little wretch was sitting directly in the street, on a cushion of dust, and staring contentedly at the soldiers as they passed, as unconscious and unafraid as if it had been a poppy sprung up there between the paving-stones, instead of a human being with a body out of which the soul might be kicked or crushed.

“Somebody is taking care of it,” Bianca said. “Everybody is taking care of it.”

In fact, the long line of soldiers made a tiny curve to accommodate this bit of humanity, and the tide of life passing at the other side made another, like a brook around a stick or stone. At length a woman, not too much afraid, certainly, snatched the child away, and, in the face of the world, administered a sound castigation, the meaning of which, it was to be hoped, the child understood.

“I never saw such countryfied things happen in any other city,” Mr. Vane said. “It is, perhaps, one reason why life here is so picturesque. Nobody, except the small class of cultivated people, behaves any differently in public from what they do in private, and the common people do not pretend to be what they are not.”

“I wish sometimes that they were a little less sincere,” the Signora remarked coldly. “One could spare that portion of the picturesque which offends against decency. They seem to have no respect for public opinion; though, perhaps,” she added, “public opinion here is not worthy of much respect. It tolerates strange customs, certainly. The workmen hammer away and saw stone all day Sunday at the house opposite, and nobody protests, that I know of. Some clergymen did think of complaining against the work going on on Sunday in the _piazza_ above, but it would have been in vain for them, of course. Let us go to luncheon, please. I am in danger of becoming ill-natured, so many things here annoy me. Do you remember the old Protestant missionary hymn about ‘Greenland’s icy mountains’? Two lines of it often occur to me here:

‘Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile.’

I shall think better of them when I have had something to eat. Hunger makes one critical. I fancy that critics are always badly-fed people. I’m very sure that if Dr. Johnson had had a comfortable dinner before he sat down to my last book, he would never have cut it up so—the book, I mean. A good roastbeef would have taken the edge quite off his blade. A dinner,” said the Signora, waxing eloquent as she seated herself at a very pretty and plentiful table—“a dinner is the most powerful of engines, and wealth is powerful only because it will procure dinners. A person whom you have fed is obliged to serve you, and the person whom you are going to feed never finds you ugly or uninteresting.”

Bianca contemplated her friend with an expression of grieved astonishment. “How can you talk so with all these flowers in the room listening to you?” she exclaimed.

“Besides, you are going to feed me, but I never saw you so near being ugly. I think, indeed, you are a little bit ugly.”

The Signora laughed pleasantly. “If I had known that the dearest flower in the room was going to find a reproachful tongue for me, I should never have uttered such shocking opinions. Never shake your sunny locks at me. It was not I who said it; ‘twas hunger. It was Bailey’s wolf. You do not know Clive Bailey? He will come this evening, and I think you may be interested in him. I must tell you about his wolf. The poor fellow was, at the age of twenty, left poor indeed; suddenly found himself without a cent in the world, after having been brought up with the expectation of a competency, and studiously educated to do nothing. Fortunately, his taste had led him to read a good deal, and he had also a fancy for writing fiction. It was being thrown into the sea to learn to swim. He began to write for the cheap newspapers, always intending to find some other employment; but what with the necessity of writing a great deal to keep himself alive, and the shock to his sensitive nature of finding himself in such a situation, he only succeeded in living the life he had stumbled into, without power to make another. It was the old story of poor writers, with, however, a pleasant ending in this case. He managed to squeeze a fair novel out of intervals in his drudge-work, and that won him a better market. In the height of his success he gathered those first sketches into a volume, and published them, giving the name of the author as A. Wolf, Esq. When somebody, not knowing the book to be his, asked him what Wolf it was who wrote those sketches, he answered: ‘The wolf at my door.’ And he insists that the same wolf is the most voluminous writer the world has ever produced, and that the title-pages of at least half the books written should bear his name. _Buon appetito!_”