This all happened at dinner, at the _table-d’hôte_, which fortunately was not very full that day. There was nobody sitting opposite, which was a great relief to Harry’s mind; but he could see from the end of the table the cynical Englishman, who had never taken any notice of him, giving an amused glance now and then at the group of friends--Paolo shedding tears into his plate, Antonio, with a face full of sympathy, tenderly removing it, essaying to console the sufferer. This was a greater trial to Harry’s temper than even the sentiment of Paolo. He shot an answering glance of defiance at his countryman, who had never so much as given the help of a kind word to the stranger. “Let’s say no more about it, Paolo,” he said, “you and I are quite different, you know. I daresay I am a brutal Englishman, but I can’t help it. That’s our nature. We don’t think so much of a little thing as you do, and we abhor making a fuss. Perhaps you don’t know what that means?” “I will nevare make a fuss more. I will learn to be a duffere, and do as you do,” said Paolo, in all the tenderness of reconciliation. Harry looked at him something as Joan looked at his mother. He had too good a heart to despise his little friend, and he did not understand him; but this sentiment was extremely inconvenient and very troublesome--on that point there could be no doubt. However, later in the evening, Paolo, who had inherited all the Italian thrift, gave his friend some very sensible advice. Instead of going to the Café, they went to Paolo’s _appartamento_, which was on the highest floor of a high house in one of the narrow streets. Though he called it an _appartamento_ it was a single room, with an odd little closet in the shape of a kitchen, and offices attached to it. The room itself was somewhat low in the roof, being so high up, but had three or four windows, and a little balcony suspended over the street, into which it made Harry dizzy to look down as into an Alpine ravine. The floor was of tiles, the walls white, with a pattern in distemper, very graceful and flowing, round the top and bottom. The bed was a very tiny and bare article, put away in a corner. In another corner stood a table. A few chairs, and an old, very straight-backed settee, with two arms, in old gilding and brocade, stood against the wall. There was a tall, brass _lucerna_, the lamp common throughout Italy, with its little bundle of snuffers and extinguisher and scissors to trim the wick, hanging from it by a chain, and a few books on a shelf. Nothing could be more bare. There was a small rug by the bedside, but no other covering for the bare area of tiles which was the chief feature in the room. Paolo had a little picture of the Madonna, a bad copy of that which is called the Madonna del Granduca, and a basin for holy water over his bed, which was covered with a red and blue cotton coverlet. Everything about showed the same bareness and absence both of comfort and ornament. But Paolo