His rooms are hung round
with pictures of actresses and ballet-dancers. He passes his mornings
in a fine dressing-gown, burning pastilles, and reading 'Don Juan' and
French novels (by the way, the life of the author of 'Don Juan,' as
described by himself, was the model of the life of a Snob). He has
twopenny-halfpenny French prints of women with languishing eyes, dressed
in dominoes,--guitars, gondolas, and so forth,--and tells you stories
about them.
'It's a bad print,' says he, 'I know, but I've a reason for liking it.
It reminds me of somebody--somebody I knew in other climes. You have
heard of the Principessa di Monte Pulciano? I met her at Rimini. Dear,
dear Francesca! That fair-haired, bright-eyed thing in the Bird of
Paradise and the Turkish Simar with the love-bird on her finger, I'm
sure must have been taken from--from somebody perhaps whom you don't
know--but she's known at Munich, Waggle my boy,--everybody knows the
Countess Ottilia de Eulenschreckenstein. Gad, sir, what a beautiful
creature she was when I danced with her on the birthday of Prince Attila
of Bavaria, in '44. Prince Carloman was our vis-a-vis, and Prince
Pepin danced the same CONTREDANSE. She had a Polyanthus in her bouquet.
Waggle, I HAVE IT NOW.' His countenance assumes an agonized and
mysterious expression, and he buries his head in the sofa cushions, as
if plunging into a whirlpool of passionate recollections.
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