One evening under our window, when the air swooned with languid scent of lemon- and orange-blossoms, we heard a sobbing and a sighing that reminded us of the Mock Turtle in "Alice in Wonderland." Glancing out, by the soft light of the summer moon, enhanced by the shimmering water, we saw two persons who seemed to be weeping in each other's arms under a shuddering ilex. The stouter one--he was not the taller--we recognized as a young Teuton for whose sake we had seen a gown very loose and a cheek very wan afar off among the Alban Hills only a month before. "I love you, Tita, I love you. I have thought I loved a dozen times before, but I was mistaken. I never loved any girl before," he boohooed. "_Dio mio!_" laughed the girl. "All the _Tedeschi_ say that who come here. I wonder they are not tired of the old tune. I--I am _fiance_ to a _bel Espagnol_ who rode away a month ago, and who ought to have been back before now." We found our Teuton fellow-_pensionnaires_ to have tastes more unnatural than for landlords' daughters. One of them we had remarked for his extreme beauty, not entirely of feature and rich olive hue, but of pathetic, dreamy expression,--as we said, like an ideal St. John. At first we never spoke of him except as "St. John." We gradually ceased to call him so, however, when we had seen him several times at table, and we grew finally so coarsely irreverent as to call him "_Mange-tout_." Our meat was brought from distant Naples, making the journey without ice, under a broiling Italian sun. Often it came to table so shorn of its pristine freshness that not the hungriest of us could condone its odor. One sultry night everybody's plate went away untouched, save two or three. Flesh and fowl were "high,"--yea, "twice high," as the British gourmet prefers his game. St. John's plate was _not_ sent away. That ideal being was served three times, after which he rose and helped himself from the side-table, remarking half apologetically as he did so, "The cook has really surpassed himself to-day!" "Ja! ja!" echoed our Teutons. We saw our St. John next morning sucking raw eggs before his coffee. "Because the _nourriture_ is poor. I do it to strengthen me," he explained. "When I am well I eat all I can hold," he confidentially imparted to the _table-d'hote_. "When I am ill I eat more than I do when I am well."