“How old are they?”
“I think ... about twenty eight or thirty.”
“Are they beautiful?”
“Oh, no; but so good.”
“That I am sure of. Do you know that in that tablet I can decipher a romance? Poor creatures! passing their lonely winter evenings imprisoned within their own walls, and finding their recreation in this lowly, provincial, inartistic work. And perhaps, labouring over it, they sighed for unrequited love ... an affection which their avaricious parents refused to sanction. Oh! they foresaw their own existence—an old maid’s dull life. Poor picture! I should like to buy it.”
“It’s not for sale. Perhaps it will be sent to the Queen.”
By degrees her melancholy was infecting her companions by the contact of her fascinating sadness. Andrea shrugged his shoulders in an effort to regain his good humour, but he had not the power to recall it—the spring was gone. Alberto, tugging at his scanty moustache, tried to shake off the impression of fatigue that had stolen upon him.
“Is there much more to be seen?” he inquired of Andrea.
“I,” observed Lucia, “have no will of my own. Take me where you please. Do you know that I belong to the ladies’ jury for flowers? Yesterday I received the appointment.”
“These juries are an epidemic,” exclaimed Alberto. “They take our wives away from us. The Signora Caterina has become invisible; now they want to sequestrate mine. I refuse my consent.”