'
The Japanese cavalier advanced with a succession of bows and smiles.
'Shall we see the Princess Isse this evening?' asked Donna Francesca
d'Ateleta, who had a mania for gathering in her drawing-rooms all the
most grotesque specimens of the exotic colonies of Rome, out of pure
love of variety and the picturesque.
The Asiatic replied in a barbarous jargon, a scarcely intelligible
compound of English, French, and Italian.
For a moment everybody was speaking at once--a chorus through which now
and then the fresh laughter of the Marchesa rang like silver bells.
'I am sure I have seen you before--I cannot remember when and I cannot
remember where, but I am certain I have seen you,' Andrea Sperelli was
saying to the duchess as he stood before her. 'When I saw you going
upstairs in front of me, a vague recollection rose up in my mind,
something that took shape from the rhythm of your movements as a picture
grows out of a melody. I did not succeed in making the recollection
clear, but when you turned round, I felt that your profile answered
incontestably to that picture. It could not have been a divination,
therefore it must have been some obscure phenomenon of memory. I must
have seen you somewhere before--who knows--perhaps in a dream--perhaps
in another world, a previous existence--'
As he pronounced this last decidedly hackneyed, not to say silly remark,
Andrea laughed frankly as if to forestall the lady's smile, whether of
incredulity or irony.
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