"What an idea! I, a sailor!"

He seemed vaguely amused at the idea. The Contessa took leave of him,
after giving him her address in the north of Italy, and begging him to
write if he found any clue to Marcello's disappearance. He promised
this, and they parted, not expecting to meet again until the autumn.

In a few days they had left Rome for different destinations. The little
apartment near the Forum of Trajan where the Contessa and her daughter
lived was shut up, and at the great villa on the Janiculum the solemn
porter put off his mourning livery and dressed himself in brown linen,
and smoked endless pipes within the closed gates when it was not too hot
to be out of doors. The horses were turned out to grass, and the
coachman and grooms departed to the country. The servants opened the
windows in the early morning, shut them at ten o'clock against the heat,
and dozed the rest of the time, or went down into the city to gossip
with their friends in the afternoon. It was high summer, and Rome went
to sleep.




CHAPTER VI


"What do we eat to-day?" asked Paoluccio, the innkeeper on the Frascati
road, as he came in from the glare and the dust and sat down in his own
black kitchen.