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I dare say he is living still living in clover on some unfortunate woman. The beautiful and the good die untimely deaths. He, and his kind, last and live." Mr. Mool had neither time nor inclination to plead in favour of the more hopeful view, which believes in the agreeable fiction called "Poetical justice." He tried to express his sense of obligation at parting. Baccani refused to listen.
"Accept my best thanks, doctor. Good-day!" "If you find Baccani let me know. Another drop of ale? Are you likely to see Mrs. Gallilee soon?" "Yes if I find Baccani." "Do you ever play with children?" "I have five of my own to play with," Mr. Mool answered. "Very well. Ask for the youngest child when you go to Mrs. Gallilee's. We call her Zo. Put your finger on her spine here, just below the neck.
"I feel your kindness," he said, "almost as keenly as I feel my own disgraceful conduct, in permitting a woman's reputation to be made the subject of a wager. From whom did you obtain your information?" "From the person who mentioned your name to me Doctor Benjulia." Baccani lifted his hand with a gesture of angry protest. "Don't speak of him again in my presence!" he burst out.
Having fully explained the object that he had in view, he left the apology for his intrusion to be inferred, and concluded by appealing, in his own modest way, to the sympathy of an honourable man. Silently forming his opinion of the lawyer, while he listened, Baccani expressed the conclusion at which he had arrived, in these terms: "My experience of mankind, sir, has been a bitterly bad one.
There was no mistaking the strange dress or the tall figure, when I saw her again in the student's room. So I paid the bet." "Do you remember the name of the man who refused to pay?" "His name was Egisto Baccani." "Have you heard anything of him since?" "Yes.
He had purposed writing to Carmina, but the idea was now inevitably pressed out of his mind. It was only at the close of the day's work that he had leisure to think of a matter of greater importance that is to say, of the necessity of discovering Benjulia's friend of other days, the Italian teacher Baccani.
Mool waited at the lodgings, and sent a note to Baccani. In ten minutes more he found himself in the presence of an elderly man, of ascetic appearance; whose looks and tones showed him to be apt to take offence on small provocation, and more than half ready to suspect an eminent solicitor of being a spy. But Mr. Mool's experience was equal to the call on it.
He has never taken the slightest notice of me; he has not even acknowledged the receipt of my prospectus. Despicable wretch! Let me hear no more of him." "Pray forgive me if I refer to him again for the last time," Mr. Mool pleaded. "Did your acquaintance with him continue, after the question of the wager had been settled?" "No, sir!" Baccani answered sternly.
He left instructions with one of his clerks to make inquiries, the next morning, at the shops of foreign booksellers. There, and there only, the question might be answered, whether Baccani was still living, and living in London. The inquiries proved successful. On Tuesday afternoon, Baccani's address was in Mr. Mool's hands.
Mool was permitted to take a copy, and to make any use of it which he might think desirable. His one remaining anxiety was to hear what had become of the person who had planned the deception. "Surely," he said, "that villain has not escaped punishment?" Baccani answered this in his own bitter way. "My dear sir, how can you ask such a simple question? That sort of man always escapes punishment.
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