One such prank rose, all at once, before my minds eye, and suddenly, in the midst of my pessimism, I laughed aloud.
I recalled the final scene of that escapade, which I myself had managed to devise. The old café had run with a bellow of delight; the victim, ridiculous in his consternation, had rushed at me howling for vengeance. But the audience, hemming him in, had danced 'round him singing a ribald little song. The air was full of battered felt hats, coffee spoons, lumps of sugar, and waving handkerchiefs. Out on the piazza the old cab-horses had pricked up their ears; the shopkeepers had run to their doorways; the police had taken notice. It was not every day that the champion joker among us was caught in such a net as he delighted to spread.
Where were they, all my jolly young men and women? Maturity, matrimony, perhaps still other acts of fate, had scattered them. Here and there a grizzled waiter let fall the old names with a shrug of perplexity, then hastened to answer the call of a rising generation as cheerful as if it were not doomed, also, to dispersion and regrets.
Then, too, in returning I had been so unfortunate as to find Florence on the verge of spring.
The soft evening air was full of a sweetness exhaled by the surrounding cup of hills. From baskets of roses, on the steps of porticoes, a fragrance floated up like incense round the limbs of statues, which were bathed in a golden light by the lamps of the piazza. Those marble countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which was gone.
"After all," I thought, "it is better not to find one of the old circle. We should make each other miserable by our reminiscences."
No sooner had I reflected thus than I found myself face to face with Antonio.
Antonio was scarcely changed. His dark visage was still vital with intelligence, still keen and strange from the exercise of an inexhaustible imagination. Yet in his eyes, which formerly had sparkled with the wit of youth, there was more depth and a hint of somberness. He had become a celebrated satirist.
"What luck!" he cried, embracing me with sincere delight. "But to think that I should have to run into you on the street!"
"I asked for you everywhere."