“I was telling Mlle. Cadet a funny story.”
Mme. Dawson and her daughters soon became friends with the most distinguished persons in the hotel; only the Marchesa Sciacca, the Maltese, avoided them as if they inspired her with profound contempt.
In a few days the Countess Brenda and Cæsar’s friendship passed beyond the bonds of friendship; but in the course of time it cooled off again.
INFLUENCE OF THE INCLINATION OF THE EARTH’S AXIS ON WHAT IS CALLED LOVE
One evening, when the Countess Brenda’s daughter had left Rome to go with her father to a villa they owned in the North, the Countess and Cæsar had a long conversation in the salon. They were alone; a great tenor was singing at the Costanzi, and the whole hotel was at the theatre. The Countess chatted with Cæsar, she reclining in a chaise longue, and he seated in a low chair. That evening the Countess was feeling in a provocative humour, and she made fun of Cæsar’s mode of life and his ideas, not with the phrases and the manners of a great lady, but with the boldness and spice of a woman of the people.
The angle that the earth’s axis makes with the trajectory of the ecliptic, and which produces those absurd phenomena that we Spaniards call seasons, determined at that period the arrival of spring, and spring had no doubt shaken the Countess Brenda’s nerves.
Spring gave cooling inflexions to the lady’s voice and made her express herself with warmth and with a shamelessly libertine air.
No doubt the core of her personality was joyful, provoking, and somewhat licentious.
Her eyes flashed, and on her lips there was a sensual expression of challenge and mockery.
Cæsar, that evening, without knowing why, was dull at expressing himself, and depressed. Some of the Countess’s questions left him in a stupid unreadiness.