United States or Palestine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She spoke with a trivial satisfaction that jarred painfully on Lavinia's memory of the past night. Gheta calmly accepted the serenade as another tribute to her beauty; Lavinia could imagine what Anna Mantegazza and her sister would say, and they both seemed commonplace even a little vulgar to her acutely sensitive being.
"Go first, please; we can get through sooner that way." They progressed from room to room, thoroughly exploring the dense throng about the auctioneer, but without finding either Gheta, Anna Mantegazza or the bull-fighter. "I can't think how she could have forgotten me!" Lavinia declared with increasing annoyance. "It's clear that they have all gone." "Don't agitate yourself," Cesare Orsi begged.
I'd like to give you something, Lavinia; and it has never been out of its box." She turned and was out of the room before Lavinia could reply. There was no reason why she shouldn't take a present from Anna Pier Mantegazza and her father had been lifelong friends, and his wife was an intimate of the Sanvianos. It would not, probably, be black. It wasn't.
Lavinia more than ever resembled an orchid, here in a gloom of towering trees curiously suggested by the draperies and space. She went forward with Anna Mantegazza to an amber blur of lamplight, the others following irregularly. Cesare Orsi sat at Lavinia's side, quickly finishing one long black cigar and lighting another; Pier Mantegazza and Mochales smoked cigarettes.
On the New Zealanders, Mantegazza, 'Viaggi e Studi, 1867, p. 526. On the other hand, bearded races admire and greatly value their beards; among the Anglo-Saxons every part of the body had a recognised value; "the loss of the beard being estimated at twenty shillings, while the breaking of a thigh was fixed at only twelve."
The sale was progressing in one of the larger salons, but the crowd circulated in a slow solid undulation through every room. Gheta and Anna Mantegazza had sought the familiar comfortable corner of an entresol, and were seated. Lavinia was standing tensely, with a laboring breast, when Bembo suddenly appeared with the man whom he had called the Flower of Spain.
And if she had not been a model Catholic, and herself above the slightest moral question, even Mantegazza could not have carried her among his own circles. As it was, people flocked to her elaborate parties, torn between the hope of being amazed and the fear that they should furnish the hub of the occasion. Gheta and her hostess arrived later.
Mantegazza, who knew a man who had intercourse fourteen times in one day, remarks that the stories of the old Italian novelists show that twelve times was regarded as a rare exception. It will be seen that whenever the sexual act is repeated frequently within a short time it is very rarely indeed that the husband can keep pace with the wife.
Later, Gheta departed for a ball, together with the Marchese Sanviano to be dropped at his club and Lavinia was left alone. The scene in the court was repeated, but with less flourish than earlier in the evening. Gheta would be nominally in the charge of Anna Mantegazza; but Lavinia knew how laxly the American would hold her responsibility.
It was past the middle of afternoon, and a steady procession of carriages and mounted officers in pale blue tunics moved below toward the shade of the Cascine. Lavinia could not see this gay progress very well, for the window it had only a narrow ledge guarded by an iron grille was practically filled by her sister, Gheta, and Anna Mantegazza.
Word Of The Day