I was contemplating her with the utmost attention, when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder, and Sor Cosimo said to me—
“You ought to hear what poetry this girl writes! Have you got it here, Olimpia—that sonnet you made last Sunday?”
“That ode, you mean—come!”
“Well, well—sonnet or ode—it’s the same thing. But if you could hear it—with rhymes, and all! I tell you! Come, let us hear it!”
“Afterwards, Cosimo, afterwards!”
Heaven preserve me! Turning to Signorina Olimpia, who still kept her finger in her book, I asked—
“What are you reading, may I ask?”
“I am just glancing over Leopardi.”
“Ah! ah!” And Sor Cosimo broke in—
“Fine! fine!—ah! very fine!”