Thereupon Dario had to begin his narrative again. It appeared that while passing along a narrow street near the Piazza Navona, he had perceived a tall, shapely girl of twenty, who was weeping and sobbing violently, prone upon a flight of steps. Touched particularly by her beauty, he had approached her and learnt that she had been working in the house outside which she was, a manufactory of wax beads, but that, slack times having come, the workshops had closed and she did not dare to return home, so fearful was the misery there. Amidst the downpour of her tears she raised such beautiful eyes to his that he ended by drawing some money from his pocket. But at this, crimson with confusion, she sprang to her feet, hiding her hands in the folds of her skirt, and refusing to take anything. She added, however, that he might follow her if it so pleased him, and give the money to her mother. And then she hurried off towards the Ponte St’. Angelo.*
* Bridge of St. Angelo.
“Yes, she was a beauty, a perfect beauty,” repeated Dario with an air of ecstasy. “Taller than I, and slim though sturdy, with the bosom of a goddess. In fact, a real antique, a Venus of twenty, her chin rather bold, her mouth and nose of perfect form, and her eyes wonderfully pure and large! And she was bare-headed too, with nothing but a crown of heavy black hair, and a dazzling face, gilded, so to say, by the sun.”
They had all begun to listen to him, enraptured, full of that passionate admiration for beauty which, in spite of every change, Rome still retains in her heart.
“Those beautiful girls of the people are becoming very rare,” remarked Morano. “You might scour the Trastevere without finding any. However, this proves that there is at least one of them left.”
“And what was your goddess’s name?” asked Benedetta, smiling, amused and enraptured like the others.
“Pierina,” replied Dario, also with a laugh.
“And what did you do with her?”
At this question the young man’s excited face assumed an expression of discomfort and fear, like the face of a child on suddenly encountering some ugly creature amidst its play.
“Oh! don’t talk of it,” said he. “I felt very sorry afterwards. I saw such misery—enough to make one ill.”