H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ I placed the jewelry in my bosom, and the dagger in its sheath I placed in the single pocket that the costume maker allowed a fool. Then Bodini took his departure and, just as though a cord had snapped, I plunged back into trouble and misery of mind. I left the tavern.
“The lights were now springing alive and the stars breaking out overhead. The noise of the Carnival rose through the evening like the sound of a sea.
“I stood undecided. Should I go to Giovanna’s house on the chance of finding her there? Then still undecided I turned toward the Corso. Perugia seemed mad that evening. ”

“ The man with the false nose had to die, the woman with the false heart had to die. But the man first.
“It was quite easy for me to kill him right there in the street. But were I to do so, I would be captured to a certainty, and then the woman would escape. You see my point, monsieur.”
He uncorked the flask as he spoke and poured out the wine with a hand as steady as the hand of a young man, albeit the moonlight, now strong almost as the light of day, showed the metacarpal bones separately and distinctly as though it were the hand of a skeleton. ”

“ Arturo got there before me. Giovanna mistaking him for me spoke to him and he, knowing that she must be my fiancée, and, for a jest, did not undeceive her. He was wearing a false nose and spending his money like a sailor. ”

“ In those old days Carnival was perhaps a more joyous affair even than now. There was more joy in the old world, I think, than in the new. Men forgot their businesses and women their houses and children their toys. King Carnival ruled them all and made them forget even Lent.
“it was the last evening of Carnival, and I was to meet Giovanna at a selected spot near the Duomo. ”

“ That business requires a great deal of knowledge both of men and things, for who knows anything of tapestry who knows nothing of St. Florent of Saumur—or of bronzes who knows nothing of Gallien? But all knowledge is useless without the flair. ”

“ I let him get thirty paces ahead, and then I slipped after him. In those few moments while hiding in a dark entry and watching the parting of those two, I had tried them in my own mind, judged them, and it was now for me to carry out the sentence of the judge. ”

“ Very simply, because he had descended from generations of men who had dealt with art, both as artists and dealers. Old Italy lived in him, as in me. Old Italy with its passions and, alas! its power of hatred. So things went on till I had reached my twenty-second year.
“Then one day my life changed. One day in the Via dei Bontempi I met a girl.
“Now I had met this girl many times before. She was, indeed, distantly related to my family, and lived in a street close to where is now the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Her name was Giovanna Batista. ”