‘I know nothing of imagination,’ the Signor Antonio observed frigidly.

‘Till we meet!’ Captain Weisspriess kissed his fingers, half as up toward the windows, and half to the Greek.  ’Save me from having to teach love to your Irma!’

He ran to join his servant.

Luigi had heard much of the conversation, as well as the last sentence.

‘It shall be to la Irma if it is to anybody,’ Luigi muttered.

’Let Weisspriess—­he will not awake love in her—­let him kindle hate, it will do,’ said the Signor Antonio.  ’She has seen him, and if he meets her on the route to Meran, she will think it her fascination.’

Looking at his watch and at the lighted windows, he repeated his special injunctions to Luigi.  ’It is near the time.  I go to sleep.  I am getting old:  I grow nervous.  Ten-twenty in addition, you shall have, if all is done right.  Your weekly pay runs on.  Twenty—­you shall have thirty!  Thirty napoleons additional!’

Ten fingers were flashed thrice.

Luigi gave a jump.  ‘Padrone, they are mine.’

‘Animal, that shake your belly-bag and brain-box, stand!’ cried the Greek, who desired to see Luigi standing firm that he might inspire himself with confidence in his integrity.  When Luigi’s posture had satisfied him, he turned and went off at great strides.

‘He does pay,’ Luigi reflected, seeing that immense virtue in his patron.  ’Yes, he pays; but what is he about?  It is this question for me—­“Do I serve my hand? or, Do I serve my heart?” My hand takes the money, and it is not German money.  My heart gives the affection, and the signorina has my heart.  She reached me that cigarette on the Motterone like the Madonna:  it is never to be forgotten!  I serve my heart!  Now, Beppo, you may come; come quick for her.  I see the carriage, and there are three stout fellows in it who could trip and muzzle you at a signal from me before you could count the letters of your father’s baptismal name.  Oh! but if the signorina disobeys me and comes out last!—­the Signor Antonio will ask the maestro, who will say, “Yes, la Vittoria was here with me last of the two”; and I lose my ten, my twenty, my thirty napoleons.’

Luigi’s chest expanded largely with a melancholy draught of air.

The carriage meantime had become visible at the head of the street, where it remained within hearing of a whistle.  One of the Milanese hired vehicles drove up to the maestro’s door shortly after, and Luigi cursed it.  His worst fears for the future of the thirty napoleons were confirmed; the door opened and the Maestro Rocco Ricci, bareheaded and in his black silk dressing-gown, led out Irma di Karski, by some called rival to la Vittoria; a tall Slavic damsel, whose laughter was not soft and smooth, whose cheeks were bright, and whose eyes were deep in the head and dull.  But she had vivacity both of lips and shoulders.  The shoulders were bony; the lips were sharp and red, like winter-berries in the morning-time.  Freshness was not absent from her aspect.  The critical objection was that it seemed a plastered freshness and not true bloom; or rather it was a savage and a hard, not a sweet freshness.  Hence perhaps the name which distinguished her la Lazzeruola (crab apple).  It was a freshness that did not invite the bite; sour to Italian taste.