Fancy him thus with all his brilliant
personal charm, his handsome head, his careless step, his look as of a
nervous nineteenth-century Apollo, and you will understand that there
is mighty little comfort in seeing him in a bad way. He was tolerably
foolish last summer at Baden Baden, but he got on his feet, and for a
while he was steady. Then he began to waver again, and at last toppled
over. Now, literally, he 's lying prone. He came into my room last
night, miserably tipsy. I assure you, it did n't amuse me..... About
Miss Light it 's a long story. She is one of the great beauties of all
time, and worth coming barefoot to Rome, like the pilgrims of old, to
see. Her complexion, her glance, her step, her dusky tresses, may have
been seen before in a goddess, but never in a woman. And you may take
this for truth, because I 'm not in love with her. On the contrary! Her
education has been simply infernal. She is corrupt, perverse, as proud
as the queen of Sheba, and an appalling coquette; but she is generous,
and with patience and skill you may enlist her imagination in a good
cause as well as in a bad one.
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