“If I did thee this service, it was more than deserved by the manner in which, before Milan——­”

“Well, let it all pass together.  We are old fools, young lady, and should we get garrulous in each other’s praise, thou mightest mistake us for braggarts; a character that, in truth, neither wholly merits.  Didst thou ever tell the girl, Melchior, of our mad excursion into the forests of the Apennines, in search of a Spanish lady that had fallen into the hands of banditti; and how we passed weeks on a foolish enterprise of errantry, that had become useless, by the timely application of a few sequins on the part of the husband, even before we started on the chivalrous, not to say silly excursion?”

“Say chivalrous, but not silly,” answered Adelheid, with the simplicity of a young and sincere mind.  “Of this adventure I have heard; but to me it has never seemed ridiculous.  A generous motive might well excuse an undertaking of less favorable auspices.”

“’Tis fortunate,” returned the Signor Grimaldi, thoughtfully, “that, if youth and exaggerated opinions lead us to commit mad pranks under the name of spirit and generosity, there are other youthful and generous minds to reflect our sentiments and to smile upon our folly.”

“This is more like the wary grey-headed ex-pounder of wisdom than like the hot-headed Gaetano Grimaldi of old!” exclaimed the baron, though he laughed while uttering the words, as if he felt, at least a portion of the other’s indifference to those exaggerated feelings that had entered much into the characters of both in youth.  “The time has been when the words, policy and calculation, would have cost a companion thy favor!”

“’Tis said that the prodigal of twenty makes? the miser of seventy.  It is certain that even our southern sun does not warm the blood of threescore as suddenly as it heats that of one.  But we will not darken thy daughter’s views of the future by a picture too faithfully drawn, lest she become wise before her time.  I have often questioned, Melchior, which is the most precious gift of nature, a worm fancy, or the colder powers of reason.  But if I must say which I most love, the point becomes less difficult of decision.  I would prefer each in its season, or rather the two united, with a gradual change in their influence.  Let the youth commence with the first in the ascendant, and close with the last.  He who begins life too cold a reasoner may end it a calculating egotist; and he who is ruled solely by his imagination is in danger of having his mind so ripened as to bring forth the fruits of a visionary.  Had it pleased heaven to have left me the dear son I possessed for so short a period, I would rather have seen him leaning to the side of exaggeration in his estimate of men, before experience came to chill his hopes, than to see him scan his fellows with a too philosophical eye in boyhood.  ’Tis said we are but clay at the best, but the ground, before it has been well tilled, sends forth the plants that are most congenial to its soil, and though it be of no great value, give me the spontaneous and generous growth of the weed, which proves the depth of the loam, rather than a stinted imitation of that which cultivation may, no doubt, render more useful if not more grateful.”