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dingo dog. From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that
of the slapping of my knee, it had been altogether absent from my
mind. Now it haunts me. It reiterates itself after the manner
of a glib phrase. I am glad I am not in a railway carriage; the
cranks would amuse the wheels with it all night long. As it is,
the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle just a few yards
away from my window. I keep asking myself: why a dingo dog? If
I am mad it is in a gentle, Jaquesian, melancholy manner. I do
not dash at life, rabid and foaming at the mouth.
I think the idiot simile must have been merely the misuse of
language so common among the halfeducated youth of Great
Britain.
Yet when I come to consider my present condition, I have
doubts as to my complete sanity. Here am I, in a little,
semifashionable French seaside place, away from my books and
my comforts and my habits, as much interested in its vapid
distractions as if the universe held no other pursuits worth the
attention of a rational man. And I have been here a calendar
month.
To please Carlotta I wear white duck trousers, a pink shirt, and
a yachtingcap. I wired for them to my London tailor and they
arrived within a week. The first time I appeared in the maniacal
costume I slunk from the stony stare of a gendarme, as I was
about to ascend the Casino steps, and hid myself among the
fishingboats lower down on the beach. Carlotta, however, was
delighted and said that I looked pretty. Now I have grown
callous, seeing other fools similarly apparelled. But a year
ago, should I have dreamed it possible for me to strut about a
fashionable _plage_ in white ducks, a pink shirt, and a
yachtingcap? I trow not. They are signs of some sort of madness
whether that of a Jaques or a dingo dog matters very little.
Pasquale was the main cause of my taking Carlotta away from
London. He came far too frequently to the house, established far
too great a familiarity with my little girl. She quoted him far
too readily. She is at the impressionable age when young women
fall easy victims to the allurements of a fascinating creature
like Pasquale. If he showed himself in the light of a possible
husband for Carlotta, I should have nothing to say. I should
give the pair my paternal benediction. But I know my Renaissance
and I know my Pasquale. Carlotta is merely a new sensationthat's
all he seems to live for, the delectable scoundrel. But I am not

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