“Fie on thee, Fabio!” he would cry.  “Thou wilt not taste life till thou hast sipped the nectar from a pair of rose-red lips—­thou shalt not guess the riddle of the stars till thou hast gazed deep down into the fathomless glory of a maiden’s eyes—­thou canst not know delight till thou hast clasped eager arms round a coy waist and heard the beating of a passionate heart against thine own!  A truce to thy musty volumes!  Believe it, those ancient and sorrowful philosophers had no manhood in them—­their blood was water—­and their slanders against women were but the pettish utterances of their own deserved disappointments.  Those who miss the chief prize of life would fain persuade others that it is not worth having.  What, man!  Thou, with a ready wit, a glancing eye, a gay smile, a supple form, thou wilt not enter the lists of love?  What says Voltaire of the blind god?

    “’Qui que tu sois voila ton maitre,
       Il fut—­il est—­ou il doit etre !’”

When my friend spoke thus I smiled, but answered nothing.  His arguments failed to convince me.  Yet I loved to hear him talk—­his voice was mellow as the note of a thrush, and his eyes had an eloquence greater than all speech.  I loved him—­God knows! unselfishly, sincerely—­with that rare tenderness sometimes felt by schoolboys for one another, but seldom experienced by grown men.  I was happy in his society, as he, indeed, appeared to be in mine.  We passed most of our time together, he, like myself, having been bereaved of his parents in early youth, and therefore left to shape out his own course of life as suited his particular fancy.  He chose art as a profession, and, though a fairly successful painter, was as poor as I was rich.  I remedied this neglect of fortune for him in various ways with due forethought and delicacy—­and gave him as many commissions as I possibly could without rousing his suspicion or wounding his pride.  For he possessed a strong attraction for me—­we had much the same tastes, we shared the same sympathies, in short, I desired nothing better than his confidence and companionship.

In this world no one, however harmless, is allowed to continue happy.  Fate—­or caprice—­cannot endure to see us monotonously at rest.  Something perfectly trivial—­a look, a word, a touch, and lo! a long chain of old associations is broken asunder, and the peace we deemed so deep and lasting in finally interrupted.  This change came to me, as surely as it comes to all.  One day—­how well I remember it!—­one sultry evening toward the end of May, 1881, I was in Naples.  I had passed the afternoon in my yacht, idly and slowly sailing over the bay, availing myself of what little wind there was.  Guido’s absence (he had gone to Rome on a visit of some weeks’ duration) rendered me somewhat of a solitary, and as my light craft ran into harbor, I found myself in a pensive, half-uncertain mood, which brought with it its own depression.  The few sailors who manned my vessel