occasion.  Among the party there happened to be a poet, whom she hoped particularly to attach to herself, wishing to induce him to write a song or two, and address them to her.  This evening, therefore, she produced scarcely anything except songs of his composing.  Like the rest of the party he was perfectly courteous to her, but she had looked for more.  She spoke to him several times, going as near the subject as she dared, but nothing further could she get.  At last, unable to bear it any longer, she sent one of her train to him, to sound him and find out whether he had not been delighted to hear his beautiful poems so beautifully executed.

“My poems?” he replied, with amazement; “pray excuse me, my dear sir,” he added, “I heard nothing but the vowels, and not all of those; however, I am in duty bound to express all gratitude for so amiable an intention.”  The dandy said nothing and kept his secret; the other endeavored to get himself out of the scrape by a few well-timed compliments.  She did not conceal her desire to have something of his which should be written for herself.

If it would not have been too ill-natured, he might have handed her the alphabet, to imagine for herself, out of that, such laudatory poem as would please her, and set it to the first melody that came to hand; but she was not to escape out of this business without mortification.  A short time after, she had to learn that the very same evening he had written, at the foot of one of Ottilie’s favorite melodies, a most lovely poem, which was something more than complimentary.

Luciana, like all persons of her sort, who never can distinguish between where they show to advantage and where to disadvantage, now determined to try her fortune in reciting.  Her memory was good, but, if the truth must be told, her execution was spiritless, and she was vehement without being passionate.  She recited ballad stories, and whatever else is usually delivered in declamation.  At the same time she had contracted an unhappy habit of accompanying what she delivered with gestures, by which, in a disagreeable way, what is purely epic and lyric is more confused than connected with the dramatic.

The Count, a keen-sighted man, soon saw through the party, their inclinations, dispositions, wishes, and capabilities, and by some means or other contrived to bring Luciana to a new kind of exhibition, which was perfectly suited to her.

“I see here,” he said, “a number of persons with fine figures, who would surely be able to imitate pictorial emotions and postures.  Suppose they were to try, if the thing is new to them, to represent some real and well-known picture.  An imitation of this kind, if it requires some labor in arrangement, has an inconceivably charming effect.”

Luciana was quick enough in perceiving that here she was on her own ground entirely.  Her fine shape, her well-rounded form, the regularity and yet expressiveness of her features, her light-brown braided hair, her long neck—­she ran them all over in her mind, and calculated on their pictorial effects, and if she had only known that her beauty showed to more advantage when she was still than when she was in motion, because in the last case certain ungracefulness continually escaped her, she would have entered even more eagerly than she did into this natural picture-making.