Family -- Fiction; Italy -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Religion -- Fiction
Don Giovanni arrived early in spite of his sleepless night. He descended
from his dogcart by the roadside, instead of driving into the field, and
he took a careful survey of the carriages he saw before him. Conspicuous
in the distance he distinguished Donna Tullia Mayer standing among a
little crowd of men near Valdarno's drag. She was easily known by her
dress, as Del Ferice had remarked on the previous evening. On this
occasion she wore a costume in which the principal colours were green and
yellow, an enormous hat, with feathers in the same proportion surmounting
her head, and she carried a yellow parasol. She was a rather handsome
woman of middle height, with unnaturally blond hair, and a fairly good
complexion, which as yet she had wisely abstained from attempting to
improve by artificial means; her eyes were blue, but uncertain in their
glance--of the kind which do not inspire confidence; and her mouth was
much admired, being small and red, with full lips. She was rapid in her
movements, and she spoke in a loud voice, easily collecting people about
her wherever there were any to collect. Her conversation was not
brilliant, but it was so abundant that its noisy vivacity passed current
for cleverness; she had a remarkably keen judgment of people, and a
remarkably bad taste in her opinions of things artistic, from beauty in
nature to beauty in dress, but she maintained her point of view
obstinately, and admitted no contradiction. It was a singular
circumstance that whereas many of her attributes were distinctly vulgar,
she nevertheless had an indescribable air of good breeding, the strange
inimitable stamp of social superiority which cannot be acquired by any
known process of education. A person seeing her might be surprised at her
loud talking, amused at her eccentricities of dress, and shocked at her
bold manner, but no one would ever think of classing her anywhere save in
what calls itself "the best society."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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