to be King of Sicily, and will, they say, if the King of Naples dies
without leaving seven sons. What a splendid man, Kitty! not tall, rather
the reverse; but such eyes, and such a beard, and so perfumed,--the very
air around him was like the garden of Attarghul! He spoke very little
English, and could not bear to talk French; he said the French betrayed
"_la sua carissima patria;_" and so, my dear Kitty, I did my best in the
syllables of the sweet South. _He_, at least, called my accent "divina,"
and said that he would come and read Petrarch with me tomorrow.
Don't let Peter be a fool when he hears this. The Prince is in a very
different sphere from poor Mary Anne! he always dances with Queen
Victoria when he's at Windsor, and called our Prince Consort "_Il suo
diletto Alberto_;" and, more than all, he's married, but separated from
the Princess. He told me this himself, and with what terrible emotion,
Kitty! I thought of Charles Kean in Claude Melnotte, as he spoke in a
low guttural voice, with his hand on his bosom. It was very dreadful,
but these temperaments, moulded alike by southern climes and ancient
descent, are awful in their passionate vehemence. I assure you, it was a
relief to me when he stopped one of the trays and took a pineapple ice.
I felt that it was a moment of peril passed in safety. You can form no
notion, dearest, of the fascination of foreign manners; something there
is so gently insinuating, so captivating, so bewitching, and withal
so natural, Kitty,--that's the very strangest thing of all. There is
absolutely nothing a foreigner cannot say to you. I almost blush as
I think of what I now know must have been the veriest commonplace of
society, but which to my ears, in all their untutored ignorance, sounded
very odd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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