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Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"A Spirit in Prison"

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."
"Everything is made for love," returned the Marchesino. "Take plenty
of soaked bread, Emilio. They know how to make this zuppa here.


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