I am your own age, and a better match." I would have fought him then and there, with the chairs, if he had liked.
"Why should I fight you ?" he inquired, in some astonishment.

"You strike me as a very peaceable person indeed." "Diavolo! do you expect me to stand quietly and hear you call my boy a scoundrel?
What do you take me for, signore?
Do you know that I am the last of the Conti Grandi, and as noble as any of you, and as fit to fight, though my hair is gray ?" "I knew, indeed, that one member of that illustrious family survived in Rome," he answered, gravely, "but I was not aware that you were he.
I am glad to make your acquaintance, and I sincerely wish that you were the father of the young man who has married my daughter.

If you were, I would be ready to arrange matters." He looked at me searchingly.
"Unfortunately, I am not any relation of his," I answered.

"His father and mother were peasants on my estate of Serveti, when it still was mine.

They died when he was a baby, and I took care of him and educated him." "Yes, he is well educated," reflected the count, "for I examined him myself.