Mezzoni the Brigand — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

62 MEZZON!: THE BRIGAND. ‘It may be so.”’ ‘“‘T can very well conceive of it, for Corrello isa handsome and sensitive fellow. Since those days he has become hardened, indeed. Do you remember when he fought with young Verdi? That was one of the hardest things ever brought against him, I think. It was a gambling dispute; nothing, one would think, but what the seconds might easily have settled. But no, Corrello insisted upon fighting Verdi, who was almost a boy in years, and a noble-hearted fellow. They fought with pistols, in the usual fashion, and Alberto sent a bullet through the boy’s brains.”’ ‘‘T remember that, and how the family mourned over their loss. Public feeling ran hard against Corrello then, and he absented himself for a consider- able time from the city. I can conceive of a man going out to fight in resenting a serious insult, but for a mere dispute at cards it is unreasonable.”’ ‘“‘Corrello would go out, they say, if you were to drop a pin upon his foot, he is so moody and im- perious. Do you know that he has not an intimate friend in all Naples, man nor woman? To be sure, his style is not exactly calculated to invite friends, that is plain, but then we all want some one to lean upon aecaslonaly. That’s why I tolerate you, my dear boy.”’ The subject of this conversation, as he passed, took no heed of any one, or at least he seemed not to do so, and yet his keen: active eyes were all about him, and he was in fact very observant of even the small- est circumstance occurring. He was plainly but handsomely dressed, of me- dium height and size, with, as we have before said, a fresh shaven handsome face, almost womanly in its delicacy of outline. He was just such a man ag Eomicbooks.co