“The Great Wall of China and the Bay of Naples! It seems so frightful never to have seen them!”
“I have never seen the Great Wall, either,” the Countess said, “and I don’t suppose, my dear, I ever shall; though I once did spend a fortnight in Italy.”
“Tell me about it.”
The Countess became reminiscent.
“In Venice,” she said, “the indecent movements of the Gondolieri quite affected my health, and, in consequence, I fell a prey to a sharp nervous fever. My temperature rose and it rose, ah, yes ... until I became quite ill. At last I said to my maid (she was an English girl from Wales, and almost equally as sensitive as me): ‘Pack.... Away!’ And we left in haste for Florence. Ah, and Florence, too, I regret to say I found very far from what it ought to have been!!! I had a window giving on the Arno, and so I could observe.... I used to see some curious sights! I would not care to scathe your ears, my Innocent, by an inventory of one half of the wantonness that went on; enough to say the tone of the place forced me to fly to Rome, where beneath the shadow of dear St Peter’s I grew gradually less distressed.”
“Still, I should like, all the same, to travel!” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi exclaimed, with a sad little snatch of a smile.
“We will ask the opinion of Father Geordie Picpus, when he comes again.”
“It would be more fitting,” Father Nostradamus murmured (professional rivalry leaping to his eye), “if Father Picpus kept himself free of the limelight a trifle more!”
“Often I fear our committees would be corvés without him....”
“Tchut.”