Laura, when she was not watching the landscape, was looking at those who
came and went in the corridor.
“The Englishman is lying in wait,” Laura observed.
“What Englishman?” asked Cæsar.
“The son of the lord.”
“Ah, yes.”
Cæsar kept on reading, and Laura continued to watch the landscape which
hurried by outside the window. After a while she exclaimed:
“O Lord, what hideous things!”
“What things?”
“Those war-ships.”
Cæsar looked where his sister pointed. In a roadstead brilliant with
sunlight he saw two men-of-war, black and full of cannons.
“That’s the way one ought to be to face life, armed to the teeth,”
exclaimed Cæsar.
“Why?” asked Laura.
“Because life is hard, and you have to be as hard as it is in order to
win.”
“You don’t consider yourself hard enough?”
“No.”
“Well, I think you are. You are like those rough, pointed rocks on the
shore, and I am like the sea.... They throw me off and I come back.”
“That is because, perhaps, when you get down to it, nothing makes any
real difference to you.”
“Oh, _bambino!_” exclaimed Laura, taking Cæsar’s hand with affectionate
irony. “You always have to be so cruel to your mamma.”
Cæsar burst into laughter, and kept Laura’s hand between both of his.
“The Englishman feels sad looking at us,” he said. “He doesn’t dream
that I am your brother.”
“Open the door, I will tell him to come in.”
Cæsar did so, and Laura invited the young Englishman to enter.
“My brother Cæsar,” she said, introducing them, “Archibaldo Marchmont.”
They both bowed, and Marchmont said to Laura in French:
“You are very cruel, Marchesa.”
“Why?”
“Because you run away from us people who admire and like you. My wife
asked me to present her to you. Would you like her to come?”
“Oh, no! She mustn’t disturb herself. I will go to her.”
“Assuredly not. One moment.”
Marchmont went out into the corridor and presented his wife to Laura and
to Cæsar.
An animated conversation sprang up among them, interrupted by Laura’s
exclamations of delight on passing one or another of the wonderful views
along the Riviera.
“You are a Latin, Marchesa, eh?” said Marchmont.
“Altogether. This is our sea. Every time I look at it, it enchants me.”
“You are going to stop at Nice?”
“No, my brother and I are on our way to Rome.”
“But Nice will be magnificent....”
“Yes, that’s true; but we have made up our minds to go to Rome to visit
our uncle, the Cardinal.”
The Englishman made a gesture of annoyance, which did not go unperceived
by his wife or by Laura. On arriving at Nice, the Englishman and his
Yankee wife got out, after promising that they would be in Rome before
many days.
Laura and Cæsar remained alone and chatted about their
fellow-travellers. According to Laura, the couple did not get along well
and they were going to separate.