"Giovanni, you are the victim of some outrageous plot," said old Saracinesca, entering his son's room on the following morning.

"I have thought it all out in the night, and I am convinced of it." Giovanni was extended upon a sofa, with a book in his hand and a cigar between his lips.

He looked up quietly from his reading.
"I am not the victim yet, nor ever will be," he answered; "but it is evident that there is something at the bottom of this besides Madame Mayer's imagination.

I will find out." "What pleases me especially," remarked the old Prince, "is the wonderful originality of the idea.

It would have been commonplace to make out that you had poisoned half-a-dozen wives, and buried their bodies in the vaults of Saracinesca; it would have been _banal_ to say that you were not yourself, but some one else; or to assert that you were a revolutionary agent in disguise, and that the real Giovanni had been murdered by you, who had taken his place without my discovering it,--very commonplace all that.