apart, and folding his arms as he spoke through his teeth, between which
he still held his pipe. "Rich? Yes--able to have a good coat for
feast-days, meat when I want it, and my brother's company when I don't
want it--for a luxury, you know! Able to take my wife to Frascati on the
last Thursday of October as a great holiday. My wife, too! A creature of
beads and saints and little books with crosses on them--who would leer
at a friar through the grating of a confessional, and who makes the
house hideous with her howling if I choose to eat a bit of pork on a
Friday! A good wife indeed! A jewel of a wife, and an apoplexy on all
such jewels! A nice wife, who has a face like a head from a tombstone in
the Campo Varano for her husband, and who has brought up her daughter to
believe that her father is condemned to everlasting flames because he
hates cod-fish--salt cod-fish soaked in water! A wife who sticks images
in the lining of my hat to convert me, and sprinkles holy water on me
Then she thinks I am asleep, but I caught her at that the other night--"

"Indeed, they say the devil does not like holy water," remarked
Gianbattista, laughing.

"And you want to many my daughter, you young fool," continued Marzio,
not heeding the interruption. "You do. I will tell you what she is like.
My daughter--yes!--she has fine eyes, but she has the tongue of the--"

"Of her father," suggested Gianbattista, suddenly frowning.

"Yes--of her father, without her father's sense," cried Marzio angrily.
"With her eyes, those fine eyes!--those eyes!--you want to marry her. If
you wish to take her away, you may, and good riddance. I want no
daughter; there are too many women in the world already. They and the
priests do all the harm between them, because the priests know how to