THE CICERONE
his favorite dish) out into the open. The name of a certain lady,
middlingly but authentically rich, who was expecting to see them in
Venice, began to figure allusively, alluringly, in their conversation.
These pointers that they directed toward Polly Herkimer Grabbe
had at first a merely educational purpose. National pride forbade
that they should allow Scampi to take them for rich Americans when
a really good example of the genre existed only a day's journey away.
But their first references to the flower-bulb heiress, to her many hus–
bands, her collection of garden statuary, her career as an impresario
of modem architecture, failed, seemingly, to impress Scampi; he
raised his eyes briefly from the plate of Saltimbocca (Jump-in-your–
mouth) that he was eating, and then returned to his meal. The lan–
guage difficulties made it sometimes impossible to tell whether Mr.
Sciarappa really heard what they said. They had remarked once, for
example, in conversational desperation, that they had come to Italy
to retrace the footsteps of Lord Byron: they were on their way from
Lausanne, where he had composed "The Prisoner of Chillon" in a
bedroom of the Hotel Angleterre, to Venice to visit his house on the
Grand Canal. "Ah well, my dear," said Mr. Sciarappa, "if he
is
an
English lord, you do not have to worry; his house will not be requi–
sitioned, and you will have the use of his gondolier." There had been
no way the young man could find of preventing the young lady from
supplying the poet's dates, and now, it seemed, Scampi was under
the impression that everyone they knew in Venice was dead. It re–
quired the largest brush-strokes to bring Miss Grabbe
to
life for him.
By the third night, when the young man had finished a wholly in–
vented account of Miss Grabbe's going through the customs with a
collection of obscene fountain statuary, Mr. Sciarappa showed interest
and inquired how old Miss Grabbe was. The next evening, at cock–
tails, he had an auto-pullman ticket to Venice.
He was leaving the next morning at seven. The two Americans,
remembering that the flower-bulb heiress was, after all, their friend,
felt appalled and slightly frightened at what they had done. They
thought of dropping some note of warning into the letter of introduc–
tion which of course they would have to write. But then they reflected
that if Miss Grabbe w.as richer than they, she was also proportionately
shrewder: glass bricks only could Mr. Sciarappa sell her for that sub-
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