On Santa Caterina’s day, the 30th of April, there is a great festa in the coast towns.  They hold the saint in especial honour on this shore, for she did much kindness there in plague-time.  Vagabonds with wares to sell have a good day.  There was, on one Santa Caterina’s day, a young man, with a small donkey-cart and a small child and a disreputable yellow dog, who was selling embroidery.  He had worked it himself; he was working at it even now, in the piazza at Varenzano, when not otherwise engaged.  But a fair is too pleasantly distracting a thing to allow of much needlework being done in the middle of it.  There are so many interesting things.  There are the roulette tables, round which interested but cautious groups stand, while the owners indefatigably and invitingly twirl.  The gambling instinct is not excessively developed in Varenzano.  There was, of course, the usual resolute and solitary player, who stood through the hours silently laying one halfpenny after another on clubs, untempted to any deviation or any alteration of stake, except that on the infrequent occasions when it really turned out clubs he stolidly laid and lost his gained halfpennies by the other.  By nine o’clock in the morning he had become a character; spectators nudged new-comers and pointed him out, with “Sempre fiori, quello.” The young man with the embroidery was sorry about him; he had an expression as if he were losing more halfpence than he could well afford.  The young man himself lost all the stakes he made; but he didn’t gamble much, knowing himself not lucky.  Instead, he watched the fluctuating fortunes of a vivacious and beautiful youth near him, who flung on his stakes with a lavish gesture of dare-devil extravagance, that implied that he was putting his fortune to the touch to win or lose it all.  It was a relief to notice that his stakes were seldom more than threepence.  When he lost, he swore softly to himself:  “Dio mio, mio Dio, Dio mio,” and then turned courteously to the embroidery-seller, who was English, with a free interpretation—­“In Engliss, bai George.”  This seemed to the embroidery-seller to be true politeness in misfortune.  The beautiful youth seemed to be a person of many languages; his most frequent interjection was, “Dio mio—­Holy Moses—­oh hang!” After which he would add an apology, addressed to the embroidery-seller, who had a certain air of refined innocence, “Bestemmiar, no.  Brutto bestemmiare.  Non gli piace, no,” and resume his game.

Peter, who was selling embroidery, liked him so much that he followed him when he went to try his luck at the cigar game.  Here Peter, who never smoked, won two black and snake-like cigars, which he presented to the beautiful young man, who received them with immense cordiality.  A little later the young man, whose name was Livio, involved himself in a violent quarrel with the cigar banker, watched by an amused, placid and impartial crowd of spectators.  Peter