"Ah! So you had some gold on you--you old liar--you old birba--you
furfante! But you are not done with me yet."
The fiendishness of his expression vanished like lightning, and he
lounged out of the cafe with a moody, impassive face.
The poor Count, after telling me this last episode, fell back trembling
in his chair. His forehead broke into perspiration. There was a wanton
insolence in the spirit of this outrage which appalled even me. What it
was to the Count's delicacy I won't attempt to guess. I am sure that if
he had been not too refined to do such a blatantly vulgar thing as dying
from apoplexy in a cafe, he would have had a fatal stroke there and
then. All irony apart, my difficulty was to keep him from seeing
the full extent of my commiseration. He shrank from every excessive
sentiment, and my commiseration was practically unbounded. It did not
surprise me to hear that he had been in bed a week. He had got up to
make his arrangements for leaving Southern Italy for good and all.
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