Part 9

he carolled softly.

“E del mio cuore la carina, E dimor' nella nostra vallettina,”

he obligingly translated. “But for all the good I get of her, she might as well live on the top of the Cornobastone,” he added dismally. “Yes, now you may bring me my coffee--only, let it be tea. When your coffee is coffee it keeps me awake at night.”

Marietta trudged back to her kitchen, nodding at the sky.

The next afternoon, however, the Duchessa di Santangiolo appeared on the opposite bank of the tumultuous Aco.

Peter happened to be engaged in the amiable pastime of tossing bread-crumbs to his goldfinches.

But a score or so of sparrows, vulture-like, lurked under cover of the neighbouring foliage, to dash in viciously, at the critical moment, and snatch the food from the finches' very mouths.

The Duchessa watched this little drama for a minute, smiling, in silent meditation: while Peter--who, for a wonder, had his back turned to the park of Ventirose, and, for a greater wonder still perhaps, felt no pricking in his thumbs--remained unconscious of her presence.

At last, sorrowfully, (but there was always a smile at the back of her eyes), she shook her head.

“Oh, the pirates, the daredevils,” she sighed.

Peter started; faced about; saluted.

“The brigands,” said she, with a glance towards the sparrows' outposts.

“Yes, poor things,” said he.

“Poor things?” cried she, indignant. “The unprincipled little monsters!”

“They can't help it,” he pleaded for them. “'It is their nature to.' They were born so. They had no choice.”

“You actually defend them!” she marvelled, rebukefully.

“Oh, dear, no,” he disclaimed. “I don't defend them. I defend nothing. I merely recognise and accept. Sparrows--finches. It's the way of the world--the established division of the world.”

She frowned incomprehension.

“The established division of the world--?”

“Exactly,” said he. “Sparrows--finches the snatchers and the snatched-from. Everything that breathes is either a sparrow or a finch. 'T is the universal war--the struggle for existence--the survival of the most unscrupulous. 'T is a miniature presentment of what's going on everywhere in earth and sky.”

She shook her head again.

“YOU see the earth and sky through black spectacles, I 'm afraid,” she remarked, with a long face. But there was still an underglow of amusement in her eyes.

“No,” he answered, “because there's a compensation. As you rise in the scale of moral development, it is true, you pass from the category of the snatchers to the category of the snatched-from, and your ultimate extinction is assured. But, on the other hand, you gain talents and sensibilities. You do not live by bread alone. These goldfinches, for a case in point, can sing--and they have your sympathy. The sparrows can only make a horrid noise--and you contemn them. That is the compensation. The snatchers can never know the joy of singing--or of being pitied by ladies.”

“N... o, perhaps not,” she consented doubtfully. The underglow of amusement in her eyes shone nearer to the surface. “But--but they can never know, either, the despair of the singer when his songs won't come.”

“Or when the ladies are pitiless. That is true,” consented Peter.

“And meanwhile they get the bread, crumbs,” she said.

“They certainly get the bread-crumbs,” he admitted.

“I 'm afraid “--she smiled, as one who has conducted a syllogism safely to its conclusion--“I 'm afraid I do not think your compensation compensates.”