As soon as the crown was placed on the head of Corinne all the instruments were heard in those triumphant airs which fill the soul with the most sublime emotion.  The sound of kettle-drums, and the flourish of trumpets, inspired Corinne with new feelings—­her eyes were filled with tears—­she sat down a moment, and covered her face with her handkerchief.  Oswald, most sensibly affected, quitted the crowd, and advanced to speak to her, but was withheld by an invincible embarrassment.  Corinne looked at him for some time, taking care nevertheless, that he should not observe the attention she paid him; but when the Prince Castel-Forte came to take her hand, in order to conduct her to the car, she yielded to his politeness with an absent mind; and, while she permitted him to hand her along, turned her head several times, under various pretexts, to take another view of Oswald.

He followed her, and at the moment when she descended the steps accompanied by her train, she made a retrograde movement, in order to behold him once more, when her crown fell off.  Oswald hastened to pick it up; and in restoring it to her, said in Italian, that an humble mortal like himself might venture to place at the feet of a goddess that crown which he dared not presume to place on her head[6].  Corinne thanked Lord Nelville in English, with that pure national accent—­that pure insular accent, which has scarcely ever been successfully imitated on the continent.  What was the astonishment of Oswald in hearing her!  He remained at first immovably fixed to the spot where he was, and feeling confused he leaned against one of the lions of basalt at the foot of the stairway descending from the Capitol.  Corinne viewed him again, forcibly struck with the emotion he betrayed; but she was dragged away towards the car, and the whole crowd disappeared long before Oswald had recovered his strength and his presence of mind.

Corinne, till then, had enchanted him as the most charming of foreigners—­as one of the wonders of that country he had come to visit; but her English accent recalled every recollection of his native country, and in a manner naturalised all the charms of Corinne.  Was she English?  Had she passed several years of her life in England?  He was lost in conjecture; but it was impossible that study alone could have taught her to speak thus—­Corinne and Lord Nelville must have lived in the same country.  Who knows whether their families were not intimate?  Perhaps even, he had seen her in his infancy!  We often have in our hearts, we know not what kind of innate image of that which we love, which may persuade us that we recognise it in an object we behold for the first time.

Oswald had cherished many prejudices against the Italians; he believed them passionate, but changeable, and incapable of any deep and lasting affection.  Already the language of Corinne at the Capitol had inspired him with a different idea.  What would be his fortune, then, if he could at once revive the recollections of his native country, and receive by imagination a new existence,—­live again for the future without forgetting the past!