'Giulia,' said Andrea with his eyes on her mouth, 'Saint Bernard uses, in one of his sermons, an epithet which would suit you marvellously. And I'll be bound you don't know this either.'
Giulia laughed her sonorous rather vacant laugh, exhaling, in the excitement of her hilarity, a more poignant perfume, like a scented shrub when it is shaken.
'What will you give me,' continued Andrea, 'if I extract from the holy sermon a voluptuous motto to fit you?'
'I don't know,' she replied laughing, holding a glass of Chablis in her long slender fingers. 'Anything you like.'
'The substantive of the adjective.'
'What?'
'We will come back to that presently. The word is: linguatica—Messer Ludovico, you can add this clause to your litanies—'Rosa linguatica, glube nos.'
'What a pity,' said Musellaro, 'that you are not at the table of a sixteenth-century prince, sitting between a Violante and an Imperia with Pietro Aretino, Giulio Romano, and Marc' Antonio!'