We found our Teuton fellow-pensionnaires to have tastes more unnatural than for landlords' daughters. One of them we had remarked for his extreme beauty, not entirely of feature and rich olive hue, but of pathetic, dreamy expression,—as we said, like an ideal St. John. At first we never spoke of him except as "St. John." We gradually ceased to call him so, however, when we had seen him several times at table, and we grew finally so coarsely irreverent as to call him "Mange-tout."
Our meat was brought from distant Naples, making the journey without ice, under a broiling Italian sun. Often it came to table so shorn of its pristine freshness that not the hungriest of us could condone its odor. One sultry night everybody's plate went away untouched, save two or three. Flesh and fowl were "high,"—yea, "twice high," as the British gourmet prefers his game. St. John's plate was not sent away. That ideal being was served three times, after which he rose and helped himself from the side-table, remarking half apologetically as he did so, "The cook has really surpassed himself to-day!"
"Ja! ja!" echoed our Teutons.
We saw our St. John next morning sucking raw eggs before his coffee.
"Because the nourriture is poor. I do it to strengthen me," he explained.
"When I am well I eat all I can hold," he confidentially imparted to the table-d'hôte. "When I am ill I eat more than I do when I am well."
One of our pensionnaires was a swarthy Brazilian, living upon a colossal and mysteriously-begotten fortune and spending what remained to him of life upon the Mediterranean shores. He knew every pensione of the whole wide region, and in strident, barbaric tones—continually reminding us of the savage aboriginal blood betrayed by narrow eyes and high cheek-bones—flooded our table-d'hôte with the gossip of pensioni at Capri, Castellamare, Pompeii, Sorrento, and Salerno,—the giddiness of all the widows, the cunning of the young girls, the wickedness of the wives, and the barefaced or clever intriguing of husband-hunting mammas. All that year, as we quietly slipped from one Mediterranean pensione to another, we met and recognized the heroes and heroines of our Brazilian's chroniques scandaleuses, and we breathed many a thanksgiving that we were slipping east while he slipped west and thus were not known of name and evil fame in advance of our coming.
Our Brazilian was a devout Catholic, which led to his giving great offence at our table. Nobody could endure to pass him anything or to take anything from him, and the hideous bird-of-prey-like rattling of his right hand at any service turned many a delicate appetite away and made our Brazilian of almost Gorgon-like effect upon all new-comers. The finger-nails of his right hand were vowed to the Virgin: for two years they had been uncut, and now, like fiendish claws, extended two inches beyond the withered and dusky fingers.
"Why am I not liked by ces belles dames?" he asked one day. "They never ask me to their excursions; they seem to shrink from taking my hand."
"Because of your talons," somebody ventured to explain.