And I pointed with my cane to the frail stalk, tipped by a double
blossom.

"Your heart," I said, "however arid it be, bears also its white
lily; and that is reason enough why I do not believe that you are
what you say--a wicked woman."

"Yes, yes, yes!" she cried, with the obstinacy of a child--"I am a
wicked woman. But I am ashamed to appear so before you who are so
good--so very, very good."

"You do not know anything at all about it," I said to her.

"I know it! I know all about you, Monsieur Bonnard!" she declared,
with a smile.

And she jumped back into her lettica.



Girgenti, November 30, 1859.


I awoke the following morning in the House of Gellias. Gellias was
a rich citizen of ancient Agrigentum. He was equally celebrated
for his generosity and for his wealth; and he endowed his native
city with a great number of free inns. Gellias has been dead for
thirteen hundred years; and nowadays there is no gratuitous
hospitality among civilised peoples. But the name of Gellias has
become that of a hotel in which, by reason of fatigue, I was able to