"The Signorina Emelia Manfredi was with him," answered
Marietta, little recking how mere words can stab.
"Oh," said Peter.
"The Lord Prince Cardinal Udeschini was very sorry not to see
the Signorino," continued Marietta.
"Poor man--was he? Let us trust that time will console him,"
said Peter, callously.
But, "I wonder," he asked himself, "I wonder whether perhaps I
was the least bit hasty yesterday? If I had stopped, I should
have saved the Cardinal a journey here to-day--I might have
known that he would come, these Italians are so punctilious
--and then, if I had stopped--if I had stopped--possibly
--possibly--"
Possibly what? Oh, nothing. And yet, if he had stopped . . .
well, at any rate, he would have gained time. The Duchessa had
already begun to thaw. If he had stopped . . . He could
formulate no precise conclusion to that if; but he felt dimly
remorseful that he had not stopped, he felt that he had indeed
been the least bit hasty. And his remorse was somehow medicine
to his reviving hope.
"After all, I scarcely gave things a fair trial yesterday," he
said.
And the corollary of that, of course, was that he might give
things a further and fairer trial some other day.
But his hope was still hard hurt; he was still in a profound
dejection.
"The Signorino is not eating his dinner," cried Marietta,
fixing him with suspicious, upbraiding eyes.
"I never said I was," he retorted.
"The Signorino is not well?" she questioned, anxious.
"Oh, yes--cosi, cosi; the Signorino is well enough," he
answered.
"The dinner"--you could perceive that she brought herself with
difficulty to frame the dread hypothesis--"the dinner is not
good?" Her voice sank. She waited, tense, for his reply.
"The dinner," said he, "if one may criticise without eating it,
the dinner is excellent. I will have no aspersions cast upon
my cook."
"Ah-h-h!" breathed Marietta, a tremulous sigh of relief.
"It is not the Signorino, it is not the dinner, it is the world
that is awry," Peter went on, in reflective melancholy. "'T is
the times that are out of joint. 'T is the sex, the Sex, that
is not well, that is not good, that needs a thorough
overhauling and reforming."
"Which sex?" asked Marietta.
"The sex," said Peter. "By the unanimous consent of
rhetoricians, there is but one sex the sex, the fair sex, the
unfair sex, the gentle sex, the barbaric sex. We men do not
form a sex, we do not even form a sect. We are your mere
hangers-on, camp-followers, satellites--your things, your
playthings--we are the mere shuttlecocks which you toss hither
and thither with your battledores, as the wanton mood impels
you. We are born of woman, we are swaddled and nursed by
woman, we are governessed by woman; subsequently, we are
beguiled by woman, fooled by woman, led on, put off, tantalised
by woman, fretted and bullied by her; finally, last scene of
all, we are wrapped in our cerements by woman. Man's life,
birth, death, turn upon woman, as upon a hinge. I have ever
been a misanthrope, but now I am seriously thinking of becoming
a misogynist as well. Would you advise me to-do so?"