'Oh, to be in there with her in the shadow--to press my lips to her
satin neck under the perfumed fur of her mantle!'
'Take me with you!' he would like to have cried.
But the horses plunged. 'Oh, take care!' Elena repeated.
He kissed her hand--pressing his lips to it as if to leave the mark of
his burning passion. He closed the door and the carriage rolled rapidly
away under the porch, and out to the Forum.
And thus ended Andrea Sperelli's first meeting with the Duchess of
Scerni.
CHAPTER II
The gray deluge of democratic mud, which swallows up so many beautiful
and rare things, is likewise gradually engulfing that particular class
of the old Italian nobility in which from generation to generation were
kept alive certain family traditions of eminent culture, refinement and
art.
To this class, which I should be inclined to denominate Arcadian because
it shone with greatest splendour in the charming atmosphere of the
eighteenth century life, belonged the Sperelli. Urbanity, hellenism,
love of all that was exquisite, a predilection for out-of-the-way
studies, an aesthetic curiosity, a passion for archaeology, and an
epicurean taste in gallantry were hereditary qualities of the house of
Sperelli. An Alessandro Sperelli brought in 1466 to Frederic of Aragon,
son of Ferdinand King of Naples, and brother to Alfonso Duke of
Calabria, a manuscript in folio containing the 'less rude' poems of the
old Tuscan writers which Lorenzo de Medici had promised him at Pisa in
1465; and in concert with the most erudite scholars of his time, that
same Alessandro wrote a Latin elegy on the death of the divine
Simonetta--sad and melting numbers after the manner of Tibullus.
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