The silence lasted some time.  Then old Saracinesca raised his head and gave vent to his feelings, with all his old energy.

“What a museum!” he exclaimed.  “I would not have believed that I should live to dine in my own house with a party of stranded figure-heads, set up in rows around my table!  The paint is all worn off and the brains are all worn out and there is nothing left but a cracked old block of wood with a ribbon around its neck.  You will be just like them, Giovanni, in a few years, for you will be just like me—­we all turn into the same shape at seventy, and if we live a dozen years longer it is because Providence designs to make us an awful example to the young.”

“I hope you do not call yourself a figure-head,” said Giovanni.

“They are calling me by worse names at this very minute as they drive home.  ’That old Methuselah of a Saracinesca, how has he the face to go on living?’ That is the way they talk.  ’People ought to die decently when other people have had enough of them, instead of sitting up at the table like death’s-heads to grin at their grandchildren and great-grandchildren!’ They talk like that, Giovanni.  I have known some of those old monuments for sixty years and more—­since they were babies and I was of Orsino’s age.  Do you suppose I do not know how they talk?  You always take me for a good, confiding old fellow, Giovanni.  But then, you never understood human nature.”

Giovanni laughed and Corona smiled.  Orsino turned round to enjoy the rare delight of seeing the old gentleman rouse himself in a fit of temper.

“If you were ever confiding it was because you were too good,” said Giovanni affectionately.

“Yes—­good and confiding—­that is it!  You always did agree with me as to my own faults.  Is it not true, Corona?  Can you not take my part against that graceless husband of yours?  He is always abusing me—­as though I were his property, or his guest.  Orsino, my boy, go away—­we are all quarrelling here like a pack of wolves, and you ought to respect your elders.  Here is your father calling me by bad names—­”

“I said you were too good,” observed Giovanni.

“Yes—­good and confiding!  If you can find anything worse to say, say it—­and may you live to hear that good-for-nothing Orsino call you good and confiding when you are eighty-two years old.  And Corona is laughing at me.  It is insufferable.  You used to be a good girl, Corona—­but you are so proud of having four sons that there is no possibility of talking to you any longer.  It is a pity that you have not brought them up better.  Look at Orsino.  He is laughing too.”

“Certainly not at you, grandfather,” the young man hastened to say.