"You will not enjoy them till my death, at all events. Did you ever reflect that I might marry again?"
"If you please to do so, do not hesitate on my account. Madame Mayer will accept you as soon as me. Marry by all means, and may you have a numerous progeny; and may they all marry in their turn, the day they are twenty. I wish you joy."
"You are intolerable, Giovanni. I should think you would have more respect for Donna Tullia—"
"Than to call her Madame Mayer," interrupted Giovanni.
"Than to suggest that she cares for nothing but a title and a fortune—"
"You showed much respect to her a moment ago, when you suggested that she was ready to rush into my arms."
"I! I never said such a thing. I said that any woman—"
"Including Madame Mayer, of course," interrupted Giovanni again.
"Can you not let me speak?" roared the Prince. Giovanni shrugged his shoulders a little, poured out a glass of wine, and helped himself to cheese, but said nothing. Seeing that his son said nothing, old Saracinesca was silent too; he was so angry that he had lost the thread of his ideas. Perhaps Giovanni regretted the quarrelsome tone he had taken, for he presently spoke to his father in a more conciliatory tone.
"Let us be just," he said. "I will listen to you, and I shall be glad if you will listen to me. In the first place, when I think of marriage I represent something to myself by the term—"