The Making of a Saint

by W. Somerset Maugham

'Yes, we rode sixty miles yesterday,' he replied.

'Sixty miles on one horse; you must have good steeds and good imaginations,' said a big, heavy-looking man—an ugly, sallow-faced person, whom I hated at first sight.

'It was only once in a way, and we wanted to get home.'

'You could not have come faster if you had been running away from a battlefield,' said the man.

I thought him needlessly disagreeable, but I did not speak. Matteo had not cultivated the golden quality.

'You talk as one who has had experience,' he remarked, smiling in his most amiable manner.

I saw Checco frown at Matteo, while the bystanders looked on interestedly.

'I only said that,' added the man, shrugging his shoulders, 'because the Duke of Calabria is rather celebrated for his retreative tactics.'

I entertained a very great respect for the Duke, who had always been a kind and generous master to me.

'Perhaps you do not know very much about tactics,' I remarked as offensively as I could.