THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



to sit at the dinner table until after midnight, talking of all sorts 

 of things. 



Although the Duke was the most democratic of men, he 

 could not get away from the fact that he was the head of three 

 old ducal families. It is true that after his return to Italy he had 

 broken with the middle-men who ran the estate, and that the 

 peasants at his suggestion had organized themselves into a 

 managing body, electing their own headman from among their 

 own number and consulting together about the management of 

 the smaller details. This act in itself had made the Duke lose 

 favor with the middle-men, who virtually controlled most of the 

 great estates, and to a certain extent with the proprietors them- 

 selves; while through a novel that he wrote some time later he 

 made himself unpopular with the Catholic Church. In fact, he 

 told me once that he was the most unpopular man in Italy. I got 

 him to write up his agrarian experiment and had it published for 

 him in an American review. 



In spite of his democracy, as I have hinted, he could not get 

 away from many of the old feudal ideas. The peasants on the 

 estate were for the most part descendants of the retainers of 

 his ancestors, as was shown in many ways that were strange to 

 me as an American. For example, one morning after breakfast 

 the peasant who happened at the time to be the president of their 

 organization called to ask the Duke's consent to the marriage 

 of two of the young peasants. 



I shall never forget those long evenings when the dear people 

 told me about themselves — in fact, gave me the history of their 

 lives. I made no attempt to respond in like fashion, since my 

 own story had been so commonplace. Here in a brief and bald 

 way is what they told me. 



As a girl, the Duchess had been small and beautiful and blond. 

 She was born and had spent her girlhood in one of the Southern 



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