Bianca contemplated her friend with an expression of grieved astonishment. “How can you talk so with all these flowers in the room listening to you?” she exclaimed.
“Besides, you are going to feed me, but I never saw you so near being ugly. I think, indeed, you are a little bit ugly.”
The Signora laughed pleasantly. “If I had known that the dearest flower in the room was going to find a reproachful tongue for me, I
should never have uttered such shocking opinions. Never shake your sunny locks at me. It was not I who said it; ‘twas hunger. It was Bailey’s wolf. You do not know Clive Bailey? He will come this evening, and I think you may be interested in him. I must tell you about his wolf. The poor fellow was, at the age of twenty, left poor indeed; suddenly found himself without a cent in the world, after having been brought up with the expectation of a competency, and studiously educated to do nothing. Fortunately, his taste had led him to read a good deal, and he had also a fancy for writing fiction. It was being thrown into the sea to learn to swim. He began to write for the cheap newspapers, always intending to find some other employment; but what with the necessity of writing a great deal to keep himself alive, and the shock to his sensitive nature of finding himself in such a situation, he only succeeded in living the life he had stumbled into, without power to make another. It was the old story of poor writers, with, however, a pleasant ending in this case. He managed to squeeze a fair novel out of intervals in his drudge-work, and that won him a better market. In the height of his success he gathered those first sketches into a volume, and published them, giving the name of the author as A. Wolf, Esq. When somebody, not knowing the book to be his, asked him what Wolf it was who wrote those sketches, he answered: ‘The wolf at my door.’ And he insists that the same wolf is the most voluminous writer the world has ever produced, and that the title-pages of at least half the books written should bear his name. Buon appetito!”
CHAPTER IV.
“A FLOCK OF SHEEP THAT LEISURELY PASS BY.”
Several persons came in that evening from seven to nine. First appeared Mr. Coleman, a mild-looking, bald-headed man of an uncertain age. Isabel immediately absorbed him. Next followed a new-comer in Rome, on whose card was inscribed “Mr. Geo. Morton.” After having seen him once, the Signora was guilty of dubbing him Mr. Geometrical Morton. “He is ridiculous, but excellent,” she told her friends while describing him. “He never laughs, because he thinks there is nothing laughable in creation, every whim of nature, human or inanimate, being the result of a mathematical principle, and every disorder only order under an extraordinary form. Of course this is neither new nor peculiar; but he announces it as if it were new, and has a peculiar manner of clapping his measuring instruments on to everything. Not a bit of cirrus can pass over the sky nor your mind, but instantly he will tell you the philosophy of it. In fine, he strips everything to the skeleton, and cannot see that it is a bore, but calls it truth, as if the flesh and drapery were not truths also, as well as more graceful. I had a quarrel with him when he was here last—or rather, I got out of all patience, and scolded him almost rudely, and he listened and replied with the most irritating patience and politeness. I suppose he thought there was some mathematical reason for my being angry, and was studying it out with his great, solemn eyes. He’s kind and honest, I am sure, and as handsome as a picture. I
pity the woman he will choose for a wife, though. If she should scold, he will bring out the barometer; if she weep, the rain-gauge; if she should be merry and affectionate, he will consult the thermometer. Ugh! he makes me feel all three-cornered.”
This gentleman made his salutations with the most perfect gravity and courtesy, and, after considering the situation a moment, seated himself by Bianca.