“Dear me! What a charming boy!” thought he; “hardly more than a child! On his holidays, no doubt. How beautifully dressed he is! His eyes look so candid! Oh, what a relief it will be to be quit of my suspicions for once! If only he knew French, I should like to talk to him.” He sat down opposite to him in the corner next the door. Lafcadio turned up the brim of his hat and began to consider him with a lifeless and apparently indifferent eye. “What is there in common between me and that squalid little rat?” reflected he. “He seems to fancy himself too. What is he smiling at me like that for? Does he imagine I’m going to embrace him? Is it possible that there exist women who fondle old men? No doubt he’d be exceedingly astonished to know that I can read writing or print with perfect fluency, upside down, or in transparency, or in a looking-glass, or on blotting-paper--a matter of three months’ training and two years’ practice--all for the love of art. Cadio, my dear boy, the problem is this: to impinge on that fellow’s fate ... but how?... Oh! I’ll offer him a cachou. Whether he accepts or not, I shall at any rate hear in what language.” “_Grazio! Grazio!_” said Fleurissoire as he refused. “Nothing doing with the old dromedary. Let’s go to sleep,” went on Lafcadio to himself, and pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes, he tried to spin a dream out of one of his youthful memories. He saw himself back at the time when he used to be called Cadio, in that remote castle in the Carpathians where his mother and he spent two summers in company with Baldi, the Italian, and Prince Wladimir Bielkowski. His room is at the end of a passage. This is the first year he has not slept near his mother.... The bronze door-handle is shaped like a lion’s head and is held in place by a big nail.... Ah! how clearly he remembers his sensations!... One night he is aroused from a deep sleep to see Uncle Wladimir--or is it a dream?--standing by his bedside, looking more gigantic even than usual--a very nightmare, draped in the fold of a huge rust-coloured caftan, with his drooping moustache, and an outrageous night-cap stuck on his head like a Persian bonnet, so that there seems no end to the length of him. He is holding in his hand a dark lantern, which he sets down on the table near the bed, beside Cadio’s watch, pushing aside a bag of marbles to make room for it. Cadio’s first thought is that his mother is dead or ill. He is on the point of asking, when Bielkowski puts his finger on his lips and signs to him to get up. The boy hastily slips on his bathing-wrap, which his uncle takes from the back of a chair and hands to him--all this with knitted brows and the look of a person who is not to be trifled with. But Cadio has such immense faith in Wladi that he hasn’t a moment’s fear. He pops on his slippers and follows him, full of curiosity at these goings-on and, as usual, all athrill for amusement.