the top of swagger. Muscari had an eagle nose like Dante;
his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak,
and might almost have carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him
a sort of Venetian melodrama. He acted as if a troubadour had still
a definite social office, like a bishop. He went as near as
his century permitted to walking the world literally like Don Juan,
with rapier and guitar.

For he never travelled without a case of swords, with which
he had fought many brilliant duels, or without a corresponding case
for his mandolin, with which he had actually serenaded Miss Ethel Harrogate,
the highly conventional daughter of a Yorkshire banker on a holiday.
Yet he was neither a charlatan nor a child; but a hot, logical Latin
who liked a certain thing and was it. His poetry was as straightforward
as anyone else's prose. He desired fame or wine or the beauty of women
with a torrid directness inconceivable among the cloudy ideals
or cloudy compromises of the north; to vaguer races his intensity
smelt of danger or even crime. Like fire or the sea, he was too simple
to be trusted.

The banker and his beautiful English daughter were staying
at the hotel attached to Muscari's restaurant; that was why it was
his favourite restaurant. A glance flashed around the room
told him at once, however, that the English party had not descended.
The restaurant was glittering, but still comparatively empty.
Two priests were talking at a table in a corner, but Muscari
(an ardent Catholic) took no more notice of them than of a couple of crows.
But from a yet farther seat, partly concealed behind a dwarf tree
golden with oranges, there rose and advanced towards the poet a person
whose costume was the most aggressively opposite to his own.