The Cardinal's Snuff Box

"A Jew, then?"

"Mache! A Jew? The Signorino!" She shrugged derision.

"And yet I'm what they call a Protestant," he said.

"No," said she.

"Yes," said he. "I refer you to my sponsors in baptism. A

regular, true blue moderate High Churchman and Tory, British

and Protestant to the backbone, with 'Frustrate their Popish

tricks' writ large all over me. You have never by any chance

married a Protestant yourself?" he asked.

"No, Signorino. I have never married any one. But it was not

for the lack of occasions. Twenty, thirty young men courted me

when I was a girl. But--mica!--I would not look at them. When

men are young they are too unsteady for husbands; when they are

old they have the rheumatism."

Admirably philosophised," he approved. But it sometimes

happens that men are neither young nor old. There are men of

thirty-five--I have even heard that there are men of forty.

What of them?"

"There is a proverb, Signorino, which says, Sposi di quarant'

anni son mai sempre tiranni," she informed him.

"For the matter of that," he retorted, "there is a proverb

which says, Love laughs at locksmiths."

"Non capisco," said Marietta.

"That's merely because it's English," said he. "You'd

understand fast enough if I should put it in Italian. But I

only quoted it to show the futility of proverbs. Laugh at

locksmiths, indeed! Why, it can't even laugh at such an

insignificant detail as a Papist's prejudices. But I wish I

were a duke and a millionaire. Do you know any one who could

create me a duke and endow me with a million?"

"No, Signorino," she answered, shaking her head.

"Fragrant Cytherea, foam-born Venus, deathless Aphrodite,

cannot, goddess though she is," he complained. "The fact is, I

'm feeling rather undone. I think I will ask you to bring me a

bottle of Asti-spumante--some of the dry kind, with the white

seal. I 'll try to pretend that it's champagne. To tell or

not to tell--that is the question.

'A face to lose youth for, to occupy age

With the dream of, meet death with-And yet, if you can believe me, the man who penned those lines

had never seen her. He penned another line equally pat to the

situation, though he had never seen me, either 'Is there no method to tell her in Spanish?"

But you can't imagine how I detest that vulgar use of 'pen' for

'write'--as if literature were a kind of pig. However, it's

perhaps no worse than the use of Asti for champagne. One

should n't be too fastidious. I must really try to think of

some method of telling her in Spanish."