‘My dear good Zotti,’ Vittoria turned to the artist in condiments, ’you must insist upon my mother going to bed at her proper time when I am out.’

‘Signorina,’ rejoined Zotti, a fat little round-headed man, with vivacious starting brown eyes, ’I have only to tell her to do a thing—­ I pull a dog by the collar; be it said with reverence.’

‘However, I am very glad to see you both such good friends.’

’Yes, signorina, we are good friends till we quarrel again.  I regret to observe to you that the respectable lady is incurably suspicious.  Of me —­Zotti!  Mother of heaven!’

‘It is you that are suspicious of me, sir,’ retorted madame.  ’Of me, of all persons!  It’s “tell me this, tell me that,” all day with you; and because I can’t answer, you are angry.’

‘Behold! the signora speaks English; we have quarrelled again,’ said Zotti.

‘My mother thinks him a perfect web of plots,’ Vittoria explained the case between them, laughing, to Ammiani; ’and Zotti is persuaded that she is an inveterate schemer.  They are both entirely innocent, only they are both excessively timid.  Out of that it grows.’

The pair dramatized her outline on the instant: 

’"Did I not see him speak to an English lady, and he will not tell me a word about it, though she’s my own countrywoman?"’

’"Is it not true that she received two letters this afternoon, and still does she pretend to be ignorant of what is going on?"’

‘Happily,’ said Vittoria, ’my mother is not a widow, or these quarrels might some day end in a fearful reconciliation.’

‘My child,’ her mother whimpered, ’you know what these autumn nights are in this country; as sure as you live, Emilia, you will catch cold, and then you’re like a shop with shutters up for the dead.’

At the same time Zotti whispered:  ’Signorina, I have kept the minestra hot for your supper; come in, come in.  And, little things, little dainty bits!—­do you live in Zotti’s house for nothing?  Sweetest delicacies that make the tongue run a stream!—­just notions of a taste—­the palate smacks and forgets; the soul seizes and remembers!’

‘Oh, such seductions!’ Vittoria exclaimed.

‘It is,’ Zotti pursued his idea, with fingers picturesquely twirling in a spider-like distension; ’it is like the damned, and they have but a crumb of a chance of Paradise, and down swoops St. Peter and has them in the gates fast!  You are worthy of all that a man can do for you, signorina.  Let him study, let him work, let him invent,—­you are worthy of all.’

‘I hope I am not too hungry to discriminate!  Zotti I see Monte Rosa.’

’Signorina, you are pleased to say so when you are famishing.  It is because—­’ the enthusiastic confectioner looked deep and oblique, as one who combined a remarkable subtlety of insight with profound reflection; ’it is because the lighter you get the higher you mount; up like an eagle of the peaks!  But we’ll give that hungry fellow a fall.  A dish of hot minestra shoots him dead.  Then, a tart of pistachios and chocolate and cream—­and my head to him who shall reveal to me the flavouring!’