spoke in admiration or in blame.  Roderick’s taste as to companions was singularly capricious.  There were very good fellows, who were disposed to cultivate him, who bored him to death; and there were others, in whom even Rowland’s good-nature was unable to discover a pretext for tolerance, in whom he appeared to find the highest social qualities.  He used to give the most fantastic reasons for his likes and dislikes.  He would declare he could n’t speak a civil word to a man who brushed his hair in a certain fashion, and he would explain his unaccountable fancy for an individual of imperceptible merit by telling you that he had an ancestor who in the thirteenth century had walled up his wife alive.  “I like to talk to a man whose ancestor has walled up his wife alive,” he would say.  “You may not see the fun of it, and think poor P——­ is a very dull fellow.  It ’s very possible; I don’t ask you to admire him.  But, for reasons of my own, I like to have him about.  The old fellow left her for three days with her face uncovered, and placed a long mirror opposite to her, so that she could see, as he said, if her gown was a fit!”

His relish for an odd flavor in his friends had led him to make the acquaintance of a number of people outside of Rowland’s well-ordered circle, and he made no secret of their being very queer fish.  He formed an intimacy, among others, with a crazy fellow who had come to Rome as an emissary of one of the Central American republics, to drive some ecclesiastical bargain with the papal government.  The Pope had given him the cold shoulder, but since he had not prospered as a diplomatist, he had sought compensation as a man of the world, and his great flamboyant curricle and negro lackeys were for several weeks one of the striking ornaments of the Pincian.  He spoke a queer jargon of Italian, Spanish, French, and English, humorously relieved with scraps of ecclesiastical Latin, and to those who inquired of Roderick what he found to interest him in such a fantastic jackanapes, the latter would reply, looking at his interlocutor with his lucid blue eyes, that it was worth any sacrifice to hear him talk nonsense!  The two had gone together one night to a ball given by a lady of some renown in the Spanish colony, and very late, on his way home, Roderick came up to Rowland’s rooms, in whose windows he had seen a light.  Rowland was going to bed, but Roderick flung himself into an armchair and chattered for an hour.  The friends of the Costa Rican envoy were as amusing as himself, and in very much the same line.  The mistress of the house had worn a yellow satin dress, and gold heels to her slippers, and at the close of the entertainment had sent for a pair of castanets, tucked up her petticoats, and danced a fandango, while the gentlemen sat cross-legged on the floor.  “It was awfully low,” Roderick said; “all of a sudden I perceived it, and bolted.  Nothing of that kind ever amuses me to the end:  before it ’s half over it