"Dame! You saw him fall insensible at the feet of the Contessa Morone, but insensibility is not death."
"Then he is alive?"
"Naturally! One must either be alive or dead. And as this devil of a tenor is not the latter, he must therefore be the former."
"Then where is he?"
"Eh! that is part of the story."
This epigrammatic fencing on the part of Beltrami annoyed me greatly, as it piqued my curiosity without satisfying it, and I threw my half-smoked cigarette away with an outburst of bad temper.
"My dear Luigi, you have promised to tell me the story of this mystery, and instead of doing so you fire off epigrammatic squibs like Pasquin during the Carnival. The story, the story! I beg of you."
"Eh! certainly! Then take another cigarette, and I will tell you this 'Thousand and Second Night' romance."