"And yet that should have been the easiest guess of the three," said he, rising abruptly and taking first a dozen paces toward the hut, then a dozen back to the shadow of the chestnut tree against the bole of which my head rested as he had laid me, having borne me thither from the sty. "_Campioni?_ That is a good word, and I thank you for it, Englishman. Yet you wonder why I hate Stephanu? Listen. Were you ever in Florence, in the Boboli gardens?" "Never. But why?" "Mbe! I have travelled, for my part." Marc'antonio now and always mentioned his travels with an innocent boastfulness. "Well, in the gardens there you will find a fountain, and on either side of it a statue--the statues of two old kings. They sit there, those two, carved in stone, face to face across the fountain; and with faces so full of hate that I declare it gives you a shiver down the spine--all the worse, if you will understand, because their eyes have no sight in them. Now the story goes that these two kings in life were friends of a princess of Tuscany far younger than themselves, and championed her, and established her house while she was weak and her enemies were strong; and that afterwards in gratitude she caused these statues to be set up beside the fountain. Another story (to me it sounds like a child's tale) says that at first there was no fountain, and that the princess knew nothing of the hatred between these old men; but the sculptor knew. Having left the order with him, she married a husband of her own age and lived for years at a foreign court. At length she returned to Florence and led her husband one day out through the garden to show him the statues, when for the first time she saw what the sculptor had done and knew for the first time that these dead men had hated one another for her sake; whereupon she let fall one tear which became the source of the fountain. To me all this part of the story is foolishness: but that I and Stephanu hate one another not otherwise than those two old kings, and for no very different cause, is God's truth, cavalier." "You are devoted to her, you two?" I asked, tempting him to continue. He gazed down on me for a moment with immeasurable contempt. "I give you a figure, and you would put it into words! Words!" He spat. "And yet it is the truth, Englishman, that once she called me her second father. 'Her second father'--I have repeated that to Stephanu once or twice when I have lost my temper (a rare thing with me). You should see him turn blue!"