Mrs. G⸺ and Melle. Nadine came in hopelessly late to table, and sometimes didn’t appear until after eight, keeping dinner waiting. One day when I descended to the dining-room, a smart young man, in the barber’s block style, wearing very yellow gloves and yellow boots, walked in. He had a white gardenia in his buttonhole and an eyeglass, which made him squint. Frau Weidemann introduced him to me as Signor Gorgolli, the son of her close friend. He shook hands with me raising his elbow to his ear, and bowed his head as politely as the exigencies of his high collar would allow. Mrs G⸺, who lighted up when men were present, but languished if there were only ladies in the room, had taken extraordinary pains with her toilette for Signor Gorgolli, and came down to dinner having put on her most becoming gown. She was displaying her best graces to him, and laid herself out to be irresistible, and encouraged the young snob, which I regretted, because you could see at once that he wasn’t the kind who needs encouragement, being thoroughly pleased with himself and seeming to think that every woman must fall in love with him. Edging his chair closer to where Mrs. G⸺ was sitting, he picked out a rose from a bowl of flowers that stood on the dinner-table, and pinned it into her low bodice. That coxcomb talked of himself all through the course of the meal, and didn’t want to hear what you say, only to tell you about himself. The letter “I” was the backbone of his conversation. He said “I this” and “I that” every time he opened his mouth; a more conceited ass I never set eyes upon. His manner struck me as peculiarly odious. He was trying all the time to impress the company with the idea that he belongs to a circle in society in which he certainly never set foot, and confessed barefacedly that his finances, being at low ebb, he was on the look-out for a rich heiress to pay off his debts, but that in the meanwhile he was disposed to get all the fun he could out of life, feeling far too young to settle into a sober family man. Signor Gorgolli came back the next day and the day after. He tried to get up a flirtation with me and was always hanging about me, twisting up the ends of his moustache and prepared for conquest. He paid me compliments upon my looks and said that he came to Cernobbio only on my account, at which I assumed an expression of extreme innocence, and pretended not to understand what he was driving at. He was certainly a very compromising young man, and I tried to avoid every occasion of meeting him, but he was such a fool, and would imagine anything except that he is not wanted. Presuming young idiot!