last pages "just to get the idea." Formerly when frequenting society
functions, he had been guilty of coolly asking an author which was his
best book--his smile of a clever man--giving the writer to understand
that he merely enquired so as not to waste time on the other volumes.
Now it was no longer necessary to do this; Argensola would read for him.
As soon as Julio would see him absorbed in a book, he would demand an
immediate share: "Tell me the story." So the "secretary," not only gave
him the plots of comedies and novels, but also detailed the argument of
Schopenhauer or of Nietzsche . . . Dona Luisa almost wept on hearing her
visitors--with that benevolence which wealth always inspires--speak of
her son as "a rather gay young man, but wonderfully well read!"

In exchange for his lessons, Argensola received, much the same treatment
as did the Greek slaves who taught rhetoric to the young patricians of
decadent Rome. In the midst of a dissertation, his lord and friend would
interrupt him with--"Get my dress suit ready. I am invited out this
evening."

At other times, when the instructor was luxuriating in bodily comfort,
with a book in one hand near the roaring stove, seeing through the
windows the gray and rainy afternoon, his disciple would suddenly appear
saying, "Quick, get out! . . . There's a woman coming!"

And Argensola, like a dog who gets up and shakes himself, would
disappear to continue his reading in some miserable little coffee house
in the neighborhood.

In his official capacity, this widely gifted man often descended from
the peaks of intellectuality to the vulgarities of everyday life. He
was the steward of the lord of the manor, the intermediary between the