I looked at him, and—I couldn't help it—I began to laugh. I had never seen such a strange mixture of ardor and coolness.
"Ah," he exclaimed, blushing, "you do think it ridiculous?"
"Yes," I said, "coming to this point, I confess it makes me laugh."
"I don't care," Sanguinetti declared with amiable doggedness: "I mean to keep her to myself."
Just at this time my attention was much taken up by the arrival in Paris of some relatives who had no great talent for assimilating their habits to foreign customs, and who carried me about in their train as cicerone and interpreter. For three or four weeks I was constantly in their company, and I saw much less of Sanguinetti that I had done before. He used to appear, however, at odd moments in my rooms, being, as may be imagined, very often in the neighborhood. I always asked him for the latest tidings of his grand passion, which had begun to glow with a fervor that made him perfectly indifferent to the judgment of others. The poor fellow was most sincerely in love. "Je suis tout à ma passion," he would say when I asked him the news. "Until that matter is settled I can think of nothing else. I have always been so when I have wanted a thing intensely. It has be-
