And this indeed came to pass, for over the intricacies of that language I made him presently to sweat consumedly.

Of the matter of our talk there is not much to say.  Henry spoke freely and well, Madame interjecting leading questions, and holding him with her eyes.  I, on the contrary, spoke little, being occupied with the scenes going on beneath me—­the men in the piazza piling the fine grain for the making of macaroni—­the changing and chaffering groups about the kerchiefed market-women—­the dark-faced, gypsy-like men with beady eyes.  The murmur of the conversation came to me only at intervals, like voices in a dream; and sometimes for whole sentences together I lost its meaning completely.

Indeed, I had more pleasure in looking at the houses in Vico Averso, which were tangled together without the semblance of a plan.  Each house, or part of a house, struggled upward to occupy its own patch of sky-line, in a hundred different heights and breadths.  Each had a scrap of garden clinging to it along the lake-side, in which the green of the magnolias contrasted with the grey aspens and the warmer oleanders.  There was a bright and laughing charm about the whole which drew my heart, and I longed to spend a lifetime in these white and foliage-fringed places.

But I found very soon that the face of Vico Averso was her fortune.  For the side of our hostel which was turned to a dark and narrow Street of Smells took away my desire to dwell there.  There came out clear in my mind the thought and sight of our hill-farm of Culsharg, set on the edge of its miles of heather, the free airs blowing about it, and all the wild birds crying.  My mother would be coming to the door to look for my grandfather as he came off the hill from the sheep.  A disgust at the bubbling devil’s-caldron, a horror of the smiling, monosyllabic Woman of the Red Eyelids, filled my heart.  I resolved to battle it out with Henry that very night, and to leave Vico Averso at once.  If he would not do so much for me, I knew that I might take the diligence back again the way I came, and report my failure.  But, for all that, I did not mean thus lamely to fail or go home with my finger in my mouth.

That night I drew from the lad his heart.  He had been here for two months—­indeed, ever since his Swiss tutor, Herr Gunther, had departed for Zurich suddenly, having been ignominiously thrashed by his own pupil.  I gathered from him that he had intended to perform the like for me, but had given up the idea after seeing me leap from the top of the diligence.

Yet he was not unwilling to be taught that there are better things out under the free sunshine than to dream away good days with a woman like Madame Von Eisenhagen, who after all had perhaps done nothing worse than encourage the lad to philander and to waste his time.  Then I cunningly painted the joys of a walking tour.  We should take our packs on our backs, only a few pounds’ weight; and, our staves in our hands, like student lads of clerkly learning in the ancient times, we should go forth to seek our adventures—­a new one every hour, a new roof to sleep under every night, and maids fairer than dreams waving hands to us over every vineyard wall.  Thus cunningly I baited my trap.