"
Then, addressing Miss Nevil:
"Mattei tells me you have just come back from Italy. No doubt,
mademoiselle, you speak the purest Tuscan--I fear you'll find it
somewhat difficult to understand our dialect."
"My daughter understands every Italian dialect," said the colonel. "She
has the gift of languages. She doesn't get it from me."
"Would mademoiselle understand, for instance, these lines from one of
our Corsican songs in which a shepherd says to his shepherdess:
"S'entrassi 'ndru paradisu santu, santu,
E nun truvassi a tia, mi n'escriria."
("If I entered the holy land of paradise
and found thee not, I would depart!")
--_Serenata di Zicavo_.
Miss Lydia did understand. She thought the quotation bold, and the look
which accompanied it still bolder, and replied, with a blush, "Capisco."
"And are you going back to your own country on furlough?" inquired the
colonel.
"No, colonel, they have put me on half-pay, because I was at Waterloo,
probably, and because I am Napoleon's fellow-countryman. I am going
home, as the song says, low in hope and low in purse," and he looked up
to the sky and sighed.
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