These gentlemen wish to see everything--is it not so?"
"Oh, the Rome of to-day is here," exclaimed Pierre; "this tells one more
about it than all the promenades among the ruins and the monuments."
"You exaggerate, my dear Abbe," declared Narcisse. "Still, I will admit
that it is very interesting. Some of the old women are particularly
expressive."
At this moment Benedetta, seeing a superbly beautiful girl in front of
her, could not restrain a cry of enraptured admiration: "/O che
bellezza!"
And then Dario, having recognised the girl, exclaimed with the same
delight: "Why, it's La Pierina; she'll show us the way."
The girl had been following the party for a moment already without daring
to approach. Her eyes, glittering with the joy of a loving slave, had at
first darted towards the Prince, and then had hastily scrutinised the
Contessina--not, however, with any show of jealous anger, but with an
expression of affectionate submission and resigned happiness at seeing
that she also was very beautiful. And the girl fully answered to the
Prince's description of her--tall, sturdy, with the bust of a goddess, a
real antique, a Juno of twenty, her chin somewhat prominent, her mouth
and nose perfect in contour, her eyes large and full like a heifer's, and
her whole face quite dazzling--gilded, so to say, by a sunflash--beneath
her casque of heavy jet-black hair.
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