“The fervid phantasy of Tiepolo,” he began rotundly, “the cool, unimpassioned splendour of Veronese--at Dolo you will see them contrasted.” I listened attentively, while the old gentleman thundered on in what was evidently a set speech. When it was over, the young Count got up; he had to be back at the barracks by half-past two. I too made as though to go; but the old man laid his hand on my arm. “Stay with me,” he said. “I enjoy your conversation infinitely.” And as he himself had hardly ceased speaking for one moment since first I set eyes on him, I could well believe it. With the gesture of a lady lifting her skirts out of the mud (and those were the days when skirts still had to be lifted) the young Count picked up his trailing sabre and swaggered off, very military, very brilliant and glittering, like a soldier on the stage, into the sunlight, out of sight. The old man’s bird-bright eyes followed him as he went. “A good boy, Fabio,” he said, turning back to me at last, “a good son.” He spoke affectionately; but there was a hint, I thought, in his smile, in the tone of his voice, a hint of amusement, of irony. It was as though he were adding, by implication, “But good boys, after all, are fools to be so good.” I found myself, in spite of my affectation of detachment, extremely curious about this old gentleman. And he, for his part, was not the man to allow any one in his company to remain for long in splendid isolation. He insisted on my taking an interest in his affairs. He told me all about them--or at any rate all about some of them--pouring out his confidences with an astonishing absence of reserve. Next to the intimate and trusted friend, the perfect stranger is the best of all possible confidants. There is no commercial traveller, of moderately sympathetic appearance, who has not, in the course of his days in the train, his evenings in the parlours of commercial hotels, been made the repository of a thousand intimate secrets--even in England. And in Italy--goodness knows what commercial travellers get told in Italy. Even I, a foreigner, speaking the language badly, and not very skilful anyhow in conducting a conversation with strangers, have heard queer things in the second-class carriages of Italian trains.... Here, too, on Pedrochi’s terrace I was to hear queer things. A door was to be left ajar, and through the crack I was to have a peep at unfamiliar lives.