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Sighing after an obdurate Viennese dancer, he had lured her
coachman into helpless intoxication, had invested himself in the
domestic's livery, and had driven off with the lady in the
darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the town.
What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was
the devil to pay in Vienna. And yet this inconsequent libertine
did the following before my own eyes. We were walking down
Piccadilly together one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It
was a black frost, agonizingly cold. A shivering wretch held out
matches for sale. His hideous red toes protruded through his
boots. My God, my God! cried Pasquale, I can't stand this!
He jumped into a crawling hansom, tore off his own boots, flung
them to the petrified beggar and drove home in his stockingfeet.
I stood on the curb and, with mingled feelings, watched the
recipient, amid an interested group of bystanders, match the
small shapely sole against his huge foot, and with a grin tuck
the boots under his arm and march away with them to the nearest
pawnbroker. If Pasquale had been an equally compassionate
Briton, he would have stopped to think, and have tossed the man a
sovereign. _But he didn't stop to think._ That was my
cinquecento Pasquale. And I loved him for it.
I went to bed last night, as I have indicated, the most contented
of created beings. I awoke this morning with no greater ruffle
on my consciousness than the appointment with my lawyers. The
sun shone. A thrush sang lustily in the big elm opposite my
bedroom windows. The tree, laughed and shook out its finery at
me like a woman, saying: See how green I am, after Sunday's
rain. Antoinette's one eyed black cat (a hideous beast) met me
in the hall and arching its back welcomed me affably to its new
residence. And on my breakfasttable I found a copy of the first
edition of Cristoforo da Costa's _Elogi delle Donne Illustri_,
a book which, in great diffidence, I had asked Lord Carnforth, a
perfect stranger, to allow me the privilege of consulting in his
library, and which Lord Carnforth, with a scholar's splendid
courtesy, had sent me to use at my convenience.
Filled with peace and goodwill to all men, like a
personification of Christmas in May, I started out this morning
to see my lawyers. I reached them at three o'clock, having idled
at secondhand bookstalls and lunched on the road. I signed
their unintelligible document, and wandered through the Temple
Gardens and along the Embankment. When I had passed under
Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little leg

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