want something better than to serve me, say so, and I'll get it for you."
"I shall never want anything better, colonel," said Michele, now sobbing aloud.
On that supreme moment the boy's imagination fixed itself, like a clock which stops during an earthquake and remains with its hands pointing at the hour and minute of the shock. His splendid young master had embraced him! He had felt the scented blond hair and moustache brush his face, and each of his brown cheeks had been sealed by a kiss from those proud lips born to win and to command! And, more, in that moment he had been adopted as a trusty servant and follower for life!
The title which had satisfied the desires of the one and procured such unimagined happiness for the other was therefore for him the most beautiful and honorable of titles. It might be fine to be a general, but in Michele's private opinion generals were rather of the nature of galanteria in the army. A colonel was a solid thing.
When, years after, the death of one heir after another had unexpectedly opened the way to a title, his master did not kiss him on becoming a duke. In fact, to the servant who left the army with him the change was an unpleasant one, and he more than suspected that it soon became so to the colonel.
"Come, Michele, saddle up and let's go out for a skirmish," the duke would say sometimes, tossing aside paper or cigar and shaking himself as if to shake off some annoying weight.
"Si, Signor Colonello!" responded Michele. Then, "Oh! scusi! I mean Signor Duca."
"No; call me colonel," was his master's smiling reply. "I hereby command you never to call me anything else. It shall be your peculiar privilege."
"Si, Signor Colonello!" said the man, blushing with delight, and from that day paraded the title.
These skirmishes were in fact combats against ennui, and were usually wild rides through vales and up mountains. Sometimes the master, pausing on a height, would call his man to him and point out how a battle might be fought on the plain below,—how this pass might be taken, that hill-top stormed. Then, riding home with such contentment as fatigue may bring, the new duke could endure for a little longer what he called his "feather-cushioned" life, and treat his wife with the patience which he had sometimes a struggle to maintain. For it was only a question of patience.
In marrying, D'Rubiera had been made the victim of his own mistaken generosity; and many a time in after-years he cursed the day that had seen him so betrayed. As he had embraced and adopted Michele on receiving a proof of his devotion, so, when the young widowed Countess Laura had thrown herself at his feet in the hour of parting and sobbed out that she could not live without him, he had taken compassion on her and offered her the hand he would fain have kept free. That her declaration was shameless he would not allow himself to think. He ascribed it to the force of that passion which, restrained till the last moment, had burst through all control at the point of losing sight of him for years, perhaps forever. He said to himself that when she should think the matter over afterward she would be covered with confusion at having so far forgotten her feminine reserve and modesty; and he strove to spare her this revenge of her more delicate instincts and make her forget that he had not been the first wooer.
He could not but feel some surprise at his success. She did not seem to be in the least aware that she had anything to be ashamed of, nor to recollect that she was not a hard-won mistress. Still, he tried not to think that her imperious caprices were a little out of place in the circumstances. He assured himself that he was quite content, and apparently succeeded in making her believe that he was.
"You cannot find all the virtues combined in one woman," he thought; "and Laura has at least the virtue of loving
