‘This young man might in an instant have thrown away his knife and pretended I was the aggressor. Why not? He might have said I attacked him. Why not? It was one incredible story against another! He might have said anything—bring some horrible charge against me—what do I know? By his dress he was no common robber. He seemed to belong to the better classes. What could I say? He was an Italian—I am a foreigner. Of course, I have a passport, and there is our consul—but to be arrested, dragged at night to the police office like a criminal!’

He shuddered. It was in his character to shrink from scandal, much more than from mere death. And certainly for many people this would have always remained—considering certain peculiarities of Neapolitan manners—a deucedly queer story. The Count was no fool. His belief in the respectable placidity of life having received this rude shock, he thought that now anything might happen. But also a notion came into his head that this young man was perhaps merely an infuriated lunatic.

The way he said this gave me the first hint of his attitude towards this adventure. In his exaggerated delicacy of sentiment he felt that nobody need be affected in his self-esteem by what a madman may choose to do to one. It became apparent, however, that the Count was to be denied that consolation. He enlarged upon the abominably savage way in which that young man rolled his glistening eyes and gnashed his white teeth. The band was going now through a slow movement of solemn braying by all the trombones, with deliberately repeated bangs of the big drum.

‘But what did you do?’ I asked greatly excited.

‘Nothing,’ answered the Count. ‘I let my hands hang down very still. I told him quietly I did not intend making a noise. He snarled like a dog, then said in an ordinary voice:

‘ “Vostro portofolio.” ’^*

‘So I naturally,’ continued the Count—and from this point acted the whole thing in pantomime. Holding me with his eyes, he went through all the motions of reaching into his inside breast pocket, taking out the pocket-book and handing it over. But that young man, still bearing steadily on the knife, refused to touch it.

He directed the Count to take the money out himself, received it into his left hand, motioned the pocket- book to be returned to the pocket, all this being done to the thrilling of flutes and clarionets sustained by the emotional drone of the hautboys. And the ‘young man,’ as the Count called him, said: ‘This seems very little.’

‘It was, indeed, only 340 or 360 lire,’ the Count pursued. ‘I had left my money in the hotel, as you know. I told him this was all I had on me. He shook his head impatiently and said:

‘ “Vostro orologio.” ’

The Count gave me the dumb show of pulling out the watch, detaching it. But, as it happened, the valuable gold timepiece he possessed had been left at a watchmaker’s for cleaning. He wore that evening (on a leather strap) the Waterbury fifty-franc thing he used to take with him on his fishing expeditions. Perceiving the nature of this booty, the well-dressed robber made a contemptuous clicking sound with his tongue like this, ‘Tse-Ah!’ and waved it away hastily. Then, as the Count was returning the disdained object to his pocket, he demanded with a threateningly increased pressure of the knife on the epigastrum, by way of reminder:

‘ “Vostri anelli.” ’

‘One of the rings,’ went on Il Conde, ‘was given me many years ago by my wife; the other is the signet ring of my father. I said, “No. That you shall not have!” ’