He returned to Costanza, his partner for the dance, and I and my officer plunged into the throng.
It was not a success. There were no points of agreement in our practice of waltzing, and after a few turns we subsided on to one of the damask sofas, exchanging commonplaces and watching the dancers, whose rapid twists and bounding action filled my heart with despair.
"I shall never be able to dance like that," I reflected. It was by no means an ungraceful performance. They leapt high, it is true, but in no vulgar fashion of mere jumping; rather they rose into the air with something of the ease and elasticity of an indiarubber ball, maintaining throughout an appearance of great seriousness and dignity.
At the end of the dance, my partner bowed himself away, and I withdrew rather forlornly to a corner, hoping to escape unnoticed. Here, however, Romeo again espied me, and led up to me a rather despondent young gentleman—a student at the University of Pisa, I afterwards learned—whom I had observed nursing his tall silk hat in solitude throughout the previous dance.
I explained earnestly that I could not dance Italian fashion; that I preferred, indeed, to be a spectator, and settled down into my corner with some philosophy.
"I dare say Andrea can waltz my way," I thought, looking down at my programme, where the initials A.B. stood out clearly on two of the gilt lines. "It is rather disappointing to have to sit still and look on while other people dance to this delightful music, but it is amusing enough, in its way, and I must keep my eyes open and remember things to tell the girls."
It annoyed me, I confess, a little to meet Costanza's glance of contemptuous pity as she whirled by with a tall officer, and a mean-spirited desire came over me to explain to her that I was sitting out from choice, and not from necessity. The flood of dancers rushed on—those many-coloured ephemera, on which the old, dim walls looked down so gravely—and still I sat there patiently enough, though my eyes were beginning to ache and my brain to whirl.
Annunziata's apple-green skirts, Bianca's blue and white stripes, the Contessima's brocade and rubies, were growing familiar to weariness, so often did they flash before my sight. It was with genuine relief that I welcomed Romeo, who came up to claim the fifth dance, the lancers, for which he had engaged me at the beginning of the evening.
But alas! the word "lancers" printed in French on the programme proved a mere will-o'-the-wisp, and I found myself drawn into the intricacies of a quite unknown and elaborate dance.
Romeo, gravely piloting me through the confusing maze, was all courtesy and patience; but Andrea, who with Costanza was our vis-à-vis, seemed entirely absorbed in observing my stupidity.