She put down that note-book and picked up another. Her thoughts now changed their shape like clouds urged by the wind.
"No; I should probably have suffered more. I had to suffer, to pass through a crisis. I suppose all wives of any intelligence have to go through it. And now, now it's easy for me to think everything beautiful, because I am happy, because my life has become easy. Ah! What's this?
"A young lady of seventeen, of noble though fallen family, anæmic, insincere, vain, envious, ambitious; knows how to conceal her faults under a cold sweetness which seems natural. She is always talking of the upper aristocracy. Some one told her she was like a Virgin of Botticelli's, and ever since she has assumed an air of ecstasy and sentiment. This does not prevent her from being ignobly enamoured of a sign-painter."
Regina recalled the enthusiasm with which the Master had read part of this extract to Signora Caterina. She saw again the big Louis XV room, flooded with the burning twilight, the clouds travelling like violet-grey birds over the greenish sky, over the greenish river.
"See what a spirit of observation! It's a character for a future story, Signora Caterina. My Gabrie picks up, picks up. She sees a character, observes it, sets it down. She is like a good housewife who keeps everything in case it may come in useful——"
The Master talked, and Regina pitied him. The Master read, and Regina recognised in the figure drawn with photographic minuteness the young lady from Sabbioneta.
Gabrie's note-book was almost filled with these little figures. Regina turned the leaves without scruple, and in the later pages she found characters of professors, students, that of Claretta (a flirt, hysterical, corrupt), whom Gabrie had met in Regina's drawing-room a few days before.
She was terrible, this future novelist; not a looking-glass, but a Röntgen apparatus!
Regina, impelled by curiosity, continued to turn the leaves and to read, standing by the little table.
"A young wife, short-sighted, dark, all eyes and mouth, clever, rather original, a little enigmatical. Of noble but fallen family; imagines she doesn't value her blue blood, and, perhaps, does not think about it; but her blood is blue, and she feels it, and would like to be aristocratic. She is fond of luxury and of rich people. She is married to a poor man, but has succeeded in making him largely increase his income."