"No, indeed!" she said; "I shall not allow you to kiss my hand in public!" And she put her hands behind her with a small, petulant gesture. "Now, then!" she said defiantly. With the utmost dignity I replied--"Indeed, I had no intention of kissing your hand, Madame; but I have the honour of wishing you a very good day." So lifting my hat, I was walking off, when, turning with me, Lucia tripped along by my side. I quickened my pace. "Stephen," she said, "will you not forgive me for the sake of the old time? It is true I am going away, and that you will not see me again--unless, unless--you will come and visit me at my country house. Stephen, if you do not walk more slowly, I declare I shall run after you down the public promenade!" I turned and looked at her. With all my heart I tried to be grave and severe, but the mock-demure look on her face caused me weakly to laugh. And then it was good-bye to all my dignity. "Lucy, I wish you would not tease me," I said, still more weakly. "Poor Toto! give it bon-bons! It shall not be teased, then," she said. Before we parted, I had promised to come and see her at her country house within ten days. And so, with a new brightness in her face, Saint Lucy of the Eyes came back to my heart, and came to stay. It was mid-April when I started for Castel del Monte. It was spring, and I was going to see my love. The land about on either side, as I went, was faintly flushed with peach-blossom shining among the hoary stones. By the cliff edge the spiny cactus threw out strange withered arms. A whitethorn without spike or spine gracefully wept floods of blonde tears. At a little port by the sea-edge I left the main route, and fared onward up into the mountains. A mule carried my baggage; and the muleteer who guided it looked like a mountebank in a garb rusty like withered leaves. Like withered leaf, too, he danced up the hillside, scaling the long array of steps which led through the olives toward Castel del Monte. Some of his antics amused me, until I saw that none of them amused himself, and that through all the contortions of his face his eyes remained fixed, joyless, tragic. Castel del Monte sat on the hill-top, eminent, far-beholding. Vine-stakes ran up hill and down dale, all about it. White houses were sprinkled here and there. As we ascended, the sea sank beneath, and the shining dashes of the wave-crests diminished to sparkling pin-points. Then with oriental suddenness the sun went down. Still upward fared the joyless _farceur_, and still upon the soles of my feet, and with my pilgrim staff in my hand, I followed. Sometimes the sprays of fragrant blossom swept across our faces. Sometimes a man stepped out from the roadside and challenged; but, on receiving a word of salutation from my knave, he returned to his place with a sharp clank of accoutrement.