Of course, as he went three times a week to the Palazzo Carmandola, he began to be used to the society of the contessina.  I never understood how he succeeded in keeping up the comedy of being a professor.  A real Roman would have discovered him in a week.  But foreigners are different.  If they are satisfied they pay their money and ask no questions.  Besides, he studied all the time, saying that if he ever lost his voice he would turn man of letters; which sounded so prudent that I had nothing to say.  Once, we were walking in the Corso, and the contessina with her father passed in the carriage.  Nino raised his hat, but they did not see him, for there is always a crowd in the Corso.

“Tell me,” he cried, excitedly, as they went by, “is it not true that she is beautiful?”

“A piece of marble, my son,” said I, suspecting nothing; and I turned into a tobacconist’s to buy a cigar.

One day—­Nino says it was in November—­the contessina began asking him questions about the Pantheon, it was in the middle of the lesson, and he wondered at her stopping to talk.  But you may imagine whether he was glad or not to have an opportunity of speaking about something besides Dante.

“Yes, signorina,” he answered, “Professor Grandi says it was built for public baths; but, of course, we all think it was a temple.”

“Were you ever there at night?” asked she, indifferently, and the sun through the window so played with her golden hair that Nino wondered how she could ever think of night at all.

“At night, signorina?  No indeed!  What should I go there at night to do, in the dark!  I was never there at night.”

“I will go there at night,” she said briefly.

“Ah—­you would have it lit up with torches, as they do the Coliseum?”

“No.  Is there no moon in Italy, professore?”

“The moon, there is.  But there is such a little hole in the top of the Rotonda”—­that is our Roman name for the Pantheon—­“that it would be very dark.”

“Precisely,” said she.  “I will go there at night, and see the moon shining through the hole in the dome.”

“Eh,” cried Nino laughing, “you will see the moon better outside in the piazza.  Why should you go inside, where you can see so little of it?”

“I will go,” replied the contessina.  “The Italians have no sense of the beautiful—­the mysterious.”  Her eyes grew dreamy as she tried to call up the picture she had never seen.

“Perhaps,” said Nino humbly.  “But,” he added, suddenly brightening at the thought, “it is very easy, if you would like to go.  I will arrange it.  Will you allow me?”

“Yes, arrange it.  Let us go on with our lesson.”