“And umbrella!” said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless, moonlit sky.
“Umbrella against the stars?” asked the parson, laughing. “The stars are no friends of mine,” said Riccabocca, “and one never knows what may happen!”
The philosopher and the parson walked on amicably.
“You have done me good,” said Riccabocca, “but I hope I am not always so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect. The evenings will sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past are almost his sole companions.”
“Sole companions?—your child?”
“She is so young.”
“Your wife?”
“She is so—” the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging adjective, and mildly added, “so good, I allow; but you must own that she and I cannot have much in common.”
“I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal; and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come up as cold as a stone.”
“Per Bacco, you are an oracle,” said Riccabocca, laughing. “But I am not so sceptical as you are. I honour the fair sex too much. There are a great many women who realize the ideal of men, to be found in—the poets!”