We were at Budua, toward Montenegro, my friend Massimo and I. In this city women are guarded with a watchful jealousy of which Italians have no notion; while homicides occur with facility and frequency. Massimo began a gallant correspondence from the window of our lodging with a girl who was our neighbour. She belonged to one of the noblest families of the place, and was engaged to a gentleman of the city. Nevertheless, she returned my friend's advances with the eagerness of one who has been kept in slavery. I must add that the future bridegroom obtained some inkling of this aërial intrigue. He was a rough Illyrian of no breeding. One morning this fellow opened conversation with us officers in a little square, where we were seated together on stone benches. With much circumlocution and a kind of awkward sprightliness, addressing himself to Massimo, and smiling half-sourly and half-sillily, he expressed his own stupid contempt for Italian customs with regard to women. The long and the short of this involved discourse was simply that all the men in Italy were cuckolds, and all the women no better than they should be. Massimo took care not to emphasise the meaning of the fellow's innuendoes, which would have called for blood and vengeance; but contented himself with bluntly defending our social institutions. In the course of his argument he proved that the barbarity and tyranny of men toward women, who are always sharp of wit and full of cleverness in every climate, caused more of immorality and intrigue in Illyria than freedom of intercourse between the sexes caused in Italy. To my mind, he spoke what was partly true and partly false; for it cannot be maintained that the facilitation and toleration of licentiousness remove it from our midst. The Illyrian, however, lacked eloquence, and felt ill at ease in carrying on a wordy warfare. So he did not attempt to confute Massimo; but rolled his head and knit his brows, and told him that he might soon be taught at his own cost how badly the Italians conduct themselves in this respect.
Nothing more was wanted in the way of challenge to set us Italians on our mettle. A trifle of this sort turned us at once into knights-errant, championing our nation's cause among half-savages, who murder men with the same indifference as they kill quails or fig-peckers. Massimo turned to me and said that, when night fell, I must take my guitar and follow him. Obeying the rash romantic impulse of my heart, I replied that nothing should prevent me from attending on him. The other Italians who were present at this interview, with more prudence than ourselves, affected to hear nothing.