Download e-book Birthday Boy: Novelette Number 1 from The Villa

Free download. Book file PDF easily for everyone and every device. You can download and read online Birthday Boy: Novelette Number 1 from The Villa file PDF Book only if you are registered here. And also you can download or read online all Book PDF file that related with Birthday Boy: Novelette Number 1 from The Villa book. Happy reading Birthday Boy: Novelette Number 1 from The Villa Bookeveryone. Download file Free Book PDF Birthday Boy: Novelette Number 1 from The Villa at Complete PDF Library. This Book have some digital formats such us :paperbook, ebook, kindle, epub, fb2 and another formats. Here is The CompletePDF Book Library. It's free to register here to get Book file PDF Birthday Boy: Novelette Number 1 from The Villa Pocket Guide.
Kindle Edition. Birthday Boy: Novelette Number 1 from The Villa Kindle Edition. $ Kindle Edition. Next page. There's a problem loading this menu right now.
Table of contents

It was raining hard; the light in the low-roofed damp rooms was dull and gray. Along the walls were ranged various pieces of carved furniture, several large diptychs and triptychs of the Tuscan school of the fourteenth century; four pieces of Flemish tapestry representing the Story of Narcissus hung from ceiling to floor; Metaurensian majolicas occupied two long shelves; stuffs—for the most part ecclesiastical—lay spread out on chairs or heaped up on tables; antiquities of the rarest kind—ivories, enamels, crystals, engraved gems, medals, coins, breviaries, illuminated manuscripts, silver of delicate workmanship were massed together in high cabinets behind the auctioneer's table.

A peculiar musty odour, arising from the clamminess of the atmosphere and this collection of ancient things, pervaded the air. When Andrea Sperelli entered the room with the Princess di Ferentino, he looked about him rapidly with a secret tremor—Is she here? Before her on the table lay her gloves and her muff, to which a little bunch of violets was fastened. She held in her hand a little bas-relief in silver, attributed to Caradosso Foppa, which she was examining with great attention.

The 60 Best Wattpad Stories of 12222

Each article passed from hand to hand along the table while the auctioneer proclaimed its merits in a loud voice, those standing behind the line of chairs leaning over to look. Some amateur encouraged by this cry bid a higher sum with his eye on his competitors. The auctioneer raised his hammer. He rapped the table.

The article fell to the last bidder. A murmur went round the assemblage, then the bidding recommenced. The Cavaliere Davila, a Neapolitan gentleman of gigantic stature and almost femininely gentle manners, a noted collector and connoisseur of majolica, gave his opinion on each article of importance. Three lots in this sale of the Cardinal's effects were really of 'superior' quality: the Story of Narcissus, the rock-crystal goblet, and an embossed silver helmet by Antonio del Pollajuolo presented by the City of Florence to the Count of Urbino in for services rendered during the taking of Volterra.

Others joined them.

Full text of "The villa of the peacock, and other stories"

The rattle of the rain against the windows almost drowned their voices. Elena held out her hand frankly to Sperelli as to everybody else, but somehow he felt that that handshake set him at a distance from her. Elena seemed to him cold and grave. That instant sufficed to freeze and destroy all his dreams; his memories of the preceding evening grew confused and dim, the torch of hope was extinguished.

What had happened to her? She was wrapped in the folds of a long otter-skin coat, and wore a toque of the [31] same fur on her head. There was something hard, almost contemptuous, in the expression of her face. Every object passed through her hands. She was much tempted by a centaur cut in a sardonyx, a very exquisite piece of workmanship, part, perhaps, of the scattered collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

She took part in the bidding, communicating her offers to the auctioneer in a low voice without raising her eyes to him. Presently the competition stopped; she obtained the intaglio for a good price. Elena could not repress a slight start. She took up the sardonyx and handed it to him to look at over her shoulder without turning round.


  • Address...Unknown!!
  • Ship Reporting;
  • Emerging Tools and Trends in Facial Plastic Surgery, An Issue of Facial Plastic Surgery Clinics - E-Book (The Clinics: Surgery).
  • The Book Scot - AbeBooks.
  • Concert Archive.

It was really a very beautiful thing. And in his heart, with his admiration for the work of art, there rose up also a sincere admiration for the noble taste of the lady who now filled all his thoughts. But the higher she rose in his imagination, the further she seemed removed from him in reality. All the security of the preceding evening was transformed into uneasiness, and his first doubts re-awoke.

He had dreamed too much last night with waking eyes, bathed in a felicity that knew no bounds, while the memory of a gesture, a smile, a turn of the head, a fold of her raiment held him captive as in a net. Now all this imaginary world had tumbled miserably about his ears at the touch of reality.

The Shirley Temple Storybook Show in Color

In Elena's eyes there had been no sign of that special greeting to which he had so ardently looked forward; she had in no wise singled him out from the crowd, had offered him no mark of favour. Why not? He felt himself slighted, humiliated.


  • Six Lieder, Op. 71, No. 1: Comfort (Tröstung)?
  • Innovative Neuromodulation.
  • The Mbeki Legacy.
  • The Official Rules for Zoom Schwartz Profigliano: Eshelman, Oshevsky, Groid, Hegeman, Comaneci, Nadia, Bozit, Boar, Obiwan, Ben Kenobe, Freznik, What/What, LAGNAF, Queeth and Kowalski.
  • The Three Mountains: The Return to the Light, Book I;
  • Short Story.
  • September/October Music Calendar: Northwestern University News.

All these fatuous people irritated him, he was exasperated by the things which seemed to engross Elena's attention, and more particularly by Filippo del Monte, [32] who leaned towards her every now and then to whisper something to her—scandal no doubt. The Marchesa d'Ateleta now arrived, cheerful as ever. Her laugh, out of the centre of the circle of men who hastened to surround her, caused Don Filippo to turn round. Andrea instantly slipped into it at Elena Muti's side. As the subtle perfume of the violets reached him, he murmured—.

In all her varying moods, changeful and caressing as the waves of the sea, there always lay a hidden menace of rebuff. She was often taken with fits of cold restraint. Andrea held his tongue, bewildered. The bids rose higher. Antonio del Pollajuolo's silver helmet was being hotly contested. Even the Cavaliere Davila entered the lists. The very air seemed gradually to become hotter; the feverish desire to possess so beautiful an object seemed to spread like a contagion.

The drawing-rooms of the nobility and the upper middle classes were crammed with curios; every lady must needs cover the cushions of her sofas and chairs with some piece of church vestment, and put her roses into an Umbrian ointment pot, or a chalcedony jar. The sale-rooms were the favourite meeting-places, and every sale crowded. It was the fashion for the ladies when they dropped in anywhere for tea in the afternoon, to enter with some such remark as—'I have just come from the sale of the painter Campos' things. Tremendous bidding! Such Hispano-Moresque plaques! I secured a jewel belonging to Maria Leczinska.

The bidding continued. Fashionable purchasers crowded round the table, vieing with each other in artistic and critical comparisons between the Giottoesque Nativities and Annuncia [33] tions. Into this atmosphere of mustiness and antiquity the ladies brought the perfume of their furs, and more especially of the violets which each one wore on her muff, according to the then prevailing charming fashion, and their presence diffused a delicious air of warmth and fragrance.

Outside, the rain continued to fall, and the light to fade. Here and there a little flame of gas struggled feebly with such daylight as remained. The bidding then began for smaller articles, which passed in turn from hand to hand down the long table. Elena handled them carefully, examined them, and placed them in front of Andrea without remark. There were enamels, ivories, eighteenth century watches, Milanese goldsmiths' work of the time of Ludovico the Moor, Books of Hours inscribed in gold letters on pale blue vellum.

These precious things seemed to increase in value under the touch of Elena's fingers; her little hands had a faint tremor of eagerness when they came in contact with some specially desirable object. Andrea watched them intently, and his imagination transformed every movement of her hands into a caress. He forestalled her next time by holding out his hand.

And from thenceforth the ivories, the enamels, the ornaments passed from the hands of the lady to those of her lover, to whom they communicated an ineffable thrill of delight.


  1. New novelette: Birthday Boy!
  2. Subterranean Press News!
  3. The 60 Best Wattpad Stories of - Design Wizard.
  4. September/October 2010 Music Calendar.

    5. He felt that thus some particle of the charm of the beloved woman entered into these objects, just as a portion of the virtue of the magnet enters into the iron. It was, in truth, the magnetic sense of love—one of those acute and profound sensations which are rarely felt but at love's beginning, and which, differing essentially from all others, seem to have no physical or moral seat, but to exist in some neutral element of our being—an element that is intermediate, and the nature of which is unknown.

    A kind of torpor seemed creeping over him.

    THE MODERN LIBRARY

    Little by little, he was losing consciousness of time and place. It was a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power and anatomical skill. Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamonds, and two rubies flashed from the deep eye-sockets. On the forehead was engraved, Ruit Hora ; and on the occiput Tibi , Hippolyta.

    It opened like a box, the hinging being almost imperceptible, and the ticking inside lent an indescribable air of life to the diminutive skull. This sepulchral jewel, the offering of some unknown artist to his mistress, had doubtless marked many an hour of rapture, and served as a warning symbol to their amorous souls. Could a lover wish for anything more exquisite and more suggestive?