Part 37

“I adore you,” said Peter, under his breath. “I'll come with great pleasure,” he said aloud.

“Marietta,” he observed, that evening, as he dined, “I would have you to know that the Aco is bridged. Hence, there is one symbol the fewer in Lombardy. But why does--you mustn't mind the Ollendorfian form of my enquiry--why does the chaplain of the Duchessa wear red stockings?”

“The chaplain of the Duchessa--?” repeated Marietta, wrinkling up her brow.

“Ang--of the Duchessa di Santangiolo. He wore red stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. Do you think that's precisely decorous--don't you think it 's the least bit light-minded--in an ecclesiastic?”

“He--? Who--?” questioned Marietta.

“But the chaplain of the Duchessa--when he was here this afternoon.”

“The chaplain of the Duchessa!” exclaimed Marietta. “Here this afternoon? The chaplain of the Duchessa was not here this afternoon. His Eminence the Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was here this afternoon.”

“What!” gasped Peter.

“Ang,” said Marietta.

“That was Cardinal Udeschini--that little harmless-looking, sweet-faced old man!” Peter wondered.

“Sicuro--the uncle of the Duca,” said she.

“Good heavens!” sighed he. “And I allowed myself to hobnob with him like a boon-companion.”

“Gia,” said she.

“You need n't rub it in,” said he. “For the matter of that, you yourself entertained him in your kitchen.”

“Scusi?” said she.

“Ah, well--it was probably for the best,” he concluded. “I daresay I should n't have behaved much better if I had known.”

“It was his coming which saved this house from being struck by lightning,” announced Marietta.

“Oh--? Was it?” exclaimed Peter.

“Yes, Signorino. The lightning would never strike a house that the Lord Prince Cardinal was in.”

“I see--it would n't venture--it would n't presume. Did--did it strike all the houses that the Lord Prince Cardinal was n't in?”

“I do not think so, Signorino. Ma non fa niente. It was a terrible storm--terrible, terrible. The lightning was going to strike this house, when the Lord Prince Cardinal arrived.”

“Hum,” said Peter. “Then you, as well as I, have reason for regarding his arrival as providential.”

XVIII

“I think something must have happened to my watch,” Peter said, next day.

Indeed, its hands moved with extraordinary, with exasperating slowness.

“It seems absurd that it should do no good to push them on,” he thought.

He would force himself, between twice ascertaining their position, to wait for a period that felt like an eternity, walking about miserably, and smoking flavourless cigarettes;--then he would stand amazed, incredulous, when, with a smirk (as it almost struck him) of ironical complacence, they would attest that his eternity had lasted something near a quarter of an hour.

“And I had professed myself a Kantian, and made light of the objective reality of Time! thou laggard, Time!” he cried, and shook his fist at Space, Time's unoffending consort.