Orsino laughed a little.  He foresaw that Spicca would not be dull company on this particular evening.  Something unusually disagreeable had probably happened to him during the day.  After long and melancholy hesitation he ordered something which he believed he could eat, and Orsino followed his example.

“Are all your people out of town?” Spicca asked, after a pause.

“Yes.  I am alone.”

“And what in the world is the attraction here?  Why do you stay?  I do not wish to be indiscreet, and I was never afflicted with curiosity.  But cases of mental alienation grow more common every day, and as an old friend of your father’s I cannot overlook symptoms of madness in you.  A really sane person avoids Rome in August.”

“It strikes me that I might say the same to you,” answered Orsino.  “I am kept here by business.  You have not even that excuse.”

“How do you know?” asked Spicca, sharply.  “Business has two main elements—­credit and debit.  The one means the absence of the other.  I leave it to your lively intelligence to decide which of the two means Rome in August, and which means Trouville or St. Moritz.”

“I had not thought of it in that light.”

“No?  I daresay not.  I constantly think of it.”

“There are other places, nearer than St. Moritz,” suggested Orsino.  “Why not go to Sorrento?”

“There was such a place once—­but my friends have found it out.  Nevertheless, I might go there.  It is better to suffer friendship in the spirit than fever in the body.  But I have a reason for staying here just at present—­a very good one.”

“Without indiscretion—?”

“No, certainly not without considerable indiscretion.  Take some more wine.  When intoxication is bliss it is folly to be sober, as the proverb says.  I cannot get tipsy, but you may, and that will be almost as amusing.  The main object of drinking wine is that one person should make confidences for the other to laugh at—­the one enjoys it quite as much as the other.”

“I would rather be the other,” said Orsino with a laugh.

“In all cases in life it is better to be the other person,” observed Spicca, thoughtfully, though the remark lacked precision.

“You mean the patient and not the agent, I suppose?”

“No.  I mean the spectator.  The spectator is a well fed, indifferent personage who laughs at the play and goes home to supper—­perdition upon him and his kind!  He is the abomination of desolation in a front stall, looking on while better men cut one another’s throats.  He is a fat man with a pink complexion and small eyes, and when he has watched other people’s troubles long enough, he retires to his comfortable vault in the family chapel in the Campo Varano, which is decorated with coloured tiles, embellished with a modern altar piece and adorned with a bust of himself by a good sculptor.  Even in death, he is still the spectator, grinning through the window of his sanctuary at the rows of nameless graves outside.  He is happy and self-satisfied still—­even in marble.  It is worth living to be such a man.”