"To the devil with the fishing," replied the young man. "Ecco! Our
dinner is ready, with thanks to the Madonna!"

They sat down, one on each side of the small table, with a smoking
lamp between them.

"I have ordered vino bianco," said the Marchesino, who still looked
sentimental. "Cameriere, take away the lamp. Put it on the next table.
Va bene. We are going to have 'zuppa di pesce,' gamberi and veal
cutlets. The wine is Capri. Now then," he added, with sudden violence
and the coarsest imaginable Neapolitan accent, "if you fellows play
'Santa Lucia,' 'Napoli Bella,' or 'Sole mio' you'll have my knife in
you. I am not an Inglese. I am a Neapolitan. Remember that!"

He proved it with a string of gutter words and oaths, at which the
musicians smiled with pleasure. Then, turning again to Artois, he
continued:

"If one doesn't tell them they think one is an imbecile. Emilio caro,
do you not love to see the moon with a beautiful girl?"

His curious assumption that Artois and he were contemporaries because
they were friends, and his apparently absolute blindness to the fact
that a man of sixty and a man of twenty-four are hardly likely to
regard the other sex with an exactly similar enthusiasm, always
secretly entertained the novelist, who made it his business with this
friend to be accommodating, and who seldom, if ever, showed himself
authoritative, or revealed any part of his real inner self.

"Ma si!" he replied; "the night and the moon are made for love."