“Long-worded, long-winded, obscure, affirmatizing by negatives, confessing by implication!—­where’s the beginning and end of you, and what’s your meaning?” said Merthyr, who talked to him as one may talk to an Italian servant.

“The contessa, my mistress, has enemies.  Padrone, I devote myself to her service.”

“By making love to a lady’s maid?”

“Padrone, a rat is not born to find his way up the grand staircase.  She has enemies.  One of them was the sublime Barto Rizzo—­admirable—­though I must hate him.  He said to his wife:  ’If a thing happens to me, stab to the heart the Countess Alessandra Ammiani.’”

“Inform me how you know that?” said Merthyr.

Beppo pointed to his head, and Merthyr smiled.  To imagine, invent, and believe, were spontaneous with Beppo when has practical sagacity was not on the stretch.  He glanced at the caffe clock.

“Padrone, at eleven to-night shall I see you here?  At eleven I shall come like a charged cannon.  I have business.  I have seen my mistress’s blood!  I will tell you:  this German girl lets me know that some one detests my mistress.  Who?  I am off to discover.  But who is the damned creature?  I must coo and kiss, while my toes are dancing on hot plates, to find her out.  Who is she?  If she were half Milan . . .”

His hands waved in outline the remainder of the speech, and he rose, but sat again.  He had caught sight of the spy, Luigi Saracco, addressing the signor Antonio-Pericles in his carriage.  Pericles drove on.  The horses presently turned, and he saluted Merthyr.

“She has but one friend in Milan:  it is myself,” was his introductory remark.  “My poor child! my dear Powys, she is the best—­’I cannot sing to you to-day, dear Pericles’—­she said that after she had opened her eyes; after the first mist, you know.  She is the best child upon earth.  I could wish she were a devil, my Powys.  Such a voice should be in an iron body.  But she has immense health.  The doctor, who is also mine, feels her pulse.  He assures me it goes as Time himself, and Time, my friend, you know, has the intention of going a great way.  She is good:  she is too good.  She makes a baby of Pericles, to whom what is woman?  Have I not the sex in my pocket?  Her husband, he is a fool, ser.”  Pericles broke thundering into a sentence of English, fell in love with it, and resumed in the same tongue:  “I—­it is I zat am her guard, her safety.  Her husband—­oh! she must marry a young man, little donkey zat she is!  We accept it as a destiny, my Powys.  And he plays false to her.  Good; I do not object.  But, imagine in your own mind, my Powys—­instead of passion, of rage, of tempest, she is frozen wiz a repose.  Do you, hein? sink it will come out,”—­Pericles eyed Merthyr with a subtle smile askew,—­“I have sot so;—­it will come out when she is one day in a terrible scene . . .  Mon Dieu! it was a terrible scene for me when I looked on ze clout