together!"--"How beautiful it was," thought Lucy, "while Corinne shared it with you!" A humid fog, such as oft arises in so well-watered a land, obscured their view of the country. During the night they heard the deluge of southern rain fall on, nay, through the roof, as if water was pursuing them with all the avidity of fire. Lucy sought in vain for the charm of Italy: it seemed that everything conspired to veil it in gloom for Oswald and herself. [1] Madame de Staël gave Lucy, at three years of age, hair long enough to make a bracelet. She was thinking of French children. The formal Edgarmonds were not more likely to deviate from the English fashion than to christen Nevil's daughter Juliette.--TR. CHAPTER VI. Since Lord Nevil had been in Italy, he had not spoken a word of the language; it even made him ill to hear it. On the evening of his arrival at Milan, he heard a tap at the door, which was followed by the entrance of a man, whose dark and prominent face would have been expressive, if animated by natural enthusiasm: it wore an unvaryingly gracious smile, and a look that strove to be poetical. He stood at the door, improvising verses in praise of the group before him, but such as might have suited any other husband, wife, or child, just as truly; and so exaggerated, that the speaker seemed to think poetry _ought_ to have no connection with truth. Oswald perceived that he was a Roman; yet, harmonious as were the sounds he uttered, the vehemence of his declamation served but to indicate more plainly the unmeaning insipidity of all he said. Nothing could be more painful for Oswald than to hear the Roman tongue thus spoken, for the first time after so long an interval; to see his dearest memories travestied, and feel his melancholy renewed by an object so ridiculous. Lucy guessed all this, and would have dismissed the improvisatore; but it was impossible to make him hear her: he paced the chamber all gesture and exclamation, heedless of the disgust he dealt his hearers, proceeding like a machine that could not stop till after a certain moment. At last that time arrived and Lucy paid him to depart. "Poetic language," said Oswald, "is so easily parodied here, that it ought to be forbidden all save those who are worthy to employ it."--"True," observed Lucy, perhaps a little too pointedly: "it is very disagreeable to be reminded of what you admire, by such a burlesque as we have just endured."--"Not so," he answered; "the contrast only makes me more deeply feel the power of genius. This same language, which may be so miserably degraded, became celestial poetry from the lips of Corinne--_your sister_." Lucy felt overwhelmed; he had not pronounced that _name_ to her before; the addition of _your sister_ sounded as if conveying a reproach. She was half suffocated; and had she given way to her tears, this moment might have proved the sweetest in her life; but she restrained them, and the