There was no sign of any meat, and Ettore, as she soon perceived, was conspicuous by his absence. There was, moreover, something portentous, something which warned of coming disaster, in the very quietness and stillness which prevailed at that side of the table. Something had happened, or was happening, without the least doubt--something of ill-omen. Minna felt the shock and the discomfort of it as strongly as if she herself had been the person concerned. She would have given a good deal not to be obliged to look at Signor Giuseppe at this moment; but who is there who does not always at such a crisis involuntarily look in the direction he would most eagerly avoid? It was only as her eyes were dragged towards him that she became conscious that the solitary voice she had for some time heard as in a dream, holding forth, was that of Signor Giuseppe. She listened for a moment, her eyes fixed upon her plate. He was talking to a young Englishman who sat next him, a recent arrival, whom he had taken into special favour on account of his having taken the trouble to study Italian seriously, and because he was really interested in certain periods of Roman history. ‘Yes,’ Signor Giuseppe was just now saying, ‘it is true. Tiberius was an aristocrat, nothing else. Read what the German historian says of him; how he despised the mob even more profoundly than he hated the patricians. Yet even he dared not neglect the amusement of that mob. Even he had to think out spectacles for that mob’s entertainment. There was fear mingled with his contempt. “Bread and the games” was a word now fairly established, and not to be neglected with impunity. He----’ Here Minna found her eyes, whether she would or not, fixed on Signor Giuseppe’s face, and she knew in an instant that all this brave show of historical instruction was put on; the whole thing was put on. Young Mr. Humphreys was wondering secretly how long he was to wait for his dinner. Signor Giuseppe, while he spoke, was crumbling bread with one hand, dashing the other through his hair, and casting glances of strained, anxious suspense towards the door leading to the kitchen regions, through which the service came. But, engrossed though he was with this, he of course knew in an instant that Minna’s attention had been drawn to the proceedings--that she was looking at him. This time he did not look angry, he looked agonized. Such a fiasco in the proceedings was enough to make all the guests take themselves off first thing to-morrow morning to other establishments where they would be better served, and after all, though he hated and despised these _forestieri_, or thought he did, he was dependent on their money and their favour for--Signora Dietrich’s bread.