the psychological value in judging of men. Some of them sang very
prettily, and San Miniato did not possess any similar accomplishment.
Indeed, in the young girl's opinion, he approached dangerously near to
being a "serious" man, as the Italians express it, and but for his known
love of gambling he might have seemed to her altogether too dull a
personage to be thought of as a possible husband. It is not easy to
define exactly what is meant in Italian by a "serious" man. The word
does not exactly translate the French equivalent, still less the English
one. It means something in the nature of a Philistine with a little
admixture of Ciceronism--pass the word--and a dash of Cato Censor to
sour the whole--a delight to school-masterly spirits, a terror to lively
damsels, the laughing-stock of the worldly wise and only just too wise
to find a congenial atmosphere in the every-day world. However, as San
Miniato just escaped the application of the adjective I have been trying
to translate, it is enough to say that he was not exactly a "serious
man," being excluded from that variety of the species by his passion
for play, which was dominant, and by the incidents of his past history,
which had not been dull.

It is true that a liking for cards and a reputation for success gained
in former love affairs are not in any sense a substitute for the outward
and attractive expressions of a genuine and present passion, but they
are better than nothing when they serve to combat such a formidable
imputation as that of "seriousness." Anything is better than that, and
as Beatrice Granmichele was inclined to like the man without knowing
why, she made the most of the few stories about him which reached her
maiden ears, and of his taste for gaming, in order to render him
interesting in her own eyes. He did, indeed, make more or less pretty
speeches to her from time to time, of a cheerfully complimentary
character when he had won money, of a gracefully melancholy nature when