“You are not dealing with a child, sir,” said the Princess, with a look at me and a somewhat heightened colour.  “Be assured that I shall have eyes only for what I choose to see.”

Mr. Fett bowed.  “As for the lodgings, I can guarantee them.  They lie on the edge of a small Jew quarter—­not the main ghetto—­ and within a stone’s-throw of the alleged birthplace of Columbus; if that be a recommendation.  Actually they are rated in the weavers’ quarter, the burgh of San Stefano, between the old and new walls, a little on the left of the main street as you go up from Sant’ Andrea towards Porticello, by the second turning beyond the Olive Gate.”

“I thank you,” I interrupted, “but at a reasonable pace we might arrive there before you have done giving us the direction.”

“My loquacity, sir, did you understand it,” said Mr. Fett, with an air of fine reproach, “springs less from the desire to instruct than from the ebullience of my feelings at so happy a rencounter.”

“Well, that’s very handsomely said,” I acknowledged.  “Oh, sir, I have a deal to tell, and to hear!  But we will talk anon.  Meanwhile”—­he touched my arm as he led the way, and I fell into step beside him—­“permit me to note a change in the lady since I last had the pleasure of meeting her—­a distinct lessening of hauteur—­a touch of (shall I say?) womanliness.  Would it be too much to ask if you are running away with her?”

“It would,” said I.  “As a matter of fact she is in Genoa to seek her brother, the Prince Camillo.”

“Nevertheless,” he insisted, and with an impertinence I could not rebuke (for fear of drawing the attention of the passers-by, who were numerous)—­“nevertheless I divine that you have much either to tell me or conceal.”

He, at any rate, was not reticent.  On our way he informed me that his companions in the lodgings were a troupe of strolling players among whom he held the important role of capo comico.  We reached the house after threading our way through a couple of tortuous alleys leading off a street which called itself the Via Servi, and under an archway with a window from which a girl blew Mr. Fett an unabashed kiss across a box of geraniums.  The master of it, a Messer’ Nicola (by surname Fazio) had rooms for us and to spare.  To him Mr. Fett handed the market-basket, after extracting from it an enormous melon, and bade him escort the Princess upstairs and give her choice of the cleanest apartments at his disposal.  He then led us to the main living-room where, from a corner-cupboard, he produced glasses, plates, spoons, a bowl of sugar, and a flask of white wine.  The flask he pushed towards Marc’antonio and Stephanu:  the melon he divided with his clasp-knife.