My temper rose dangerously--but I controlled it, and remembering my part in the drama I had constructed, I broke into violent, harsh laughter.
"Bravo!" I exclaimed. "One can easily see what a first-rate young fellow YOU are! You have no liking for moral men--ha, ha! excellent! I agree with you. A virtuous man and a fool are synonyms nowadays. Yes--I have lived long enough to know that! And here is our coffee--behold also the glorias! I drink your health with pleasure, Signor Ferrari--you and I must be friends!"
For one moment he seemed startled by my sudden outburst of mirth--the next, he laughed heartily himself, and as the waiter appeared with the coffee and cognac, inspired by the occasion, he made an equivocal, slightly indelicate joke concerning the personal charms of a certain Antoinetta whom the garcon was supposed to favor with an eye to matrimony. The fellow grinned, in nowise offended--and pocketing fresh gratuities from both Ferrari and myself, departed on new errands for other customers, apparently in high good humor with himself, Antoinetta, and the world in general. Resuming the interrupted conversation I said: "And this poor weak-minded Romani--was his death sudden?"
"Remarkably so," answered Ferrari, leaning back in his chair, and turning his handsome flushed face up to the sky where the stars were beginning to twinkle out one by ones "it appears from all accounts that he rose early and went out for a walk on one of those insufferably hot August mornings, and at the furthest limit of the villa grounds he came upon a fruit-seller dying of cholera. Of course, with his quixotic ideas, he must needs stay and talk to the boy, and then run like a madman through the heat into Naples, to find a doctor for him. Instead of a physician he met a priest, and he was taking this priest to the assistance of the fruit-seller (who by the bye died in the meantime and was past all caring for) when he himself was struck down by the plague. He was carried then and there to a common inn, where in about five hours he died--all the time shrieking curses on any one who should dare to take him alive or dead inside his own house. He showed good sense in that at least--naturally he was anxious not to bring the contagion to his wife and child."
"Is the child a boy or a girl?" I asked, carelessly.
"A girl. A mere baby--an uninteresting old-fashioned little thing, very like her father."
My poor little Stella.