“Your notion would suit me down to the ground,” said the bishop, who was a good Latinist.  “I would love to converse in the old style with a student from Salamanca or Bergen or Khieff or Padua or—­”

Don Francesco gave utterance to some wholly unintelligible speech.  Then he observed: 

“The student might not be able to catch your meaning, Mr. Heard.  I was only talking Latin!  You see, we would be obliged to standardize our pronunciation.  I wonder, by the way, why the old scholars’ language was ever discarded?”

“Patriotism destroyed it,” replied the Count.  “That narrow modern patriotism of the cock-on-the-dung-hill type.”

Mr. Keith began: 

“It is an atavistic and altogether discreditable phenomenon—­this recent recrudescence of monarchical principles—­”

“What did you promise about long words?” playfully enquired the Duchess, who had just returned.

“I cannot help it, dear lady.  It is my mother’s fault.  She was so very precise.  I was carefully brought up.”

“That is a pity, Mr. Keith.”

“Northern people are very precise,” said Don Francesco, folding his gown around his ample limbs.  “Particularly in love affairs.  We down here, who live in this sirocco, are supposed to be calculating and mercenary in matters of the heart.  We want dowries for our daughters—­they say we are always coming to the point:  money, money!  The capacity of an English girl for coming to the point will take some beating.  She paralyses you with directness.  I will tell you a true story.  There was a young Italian whom I knew—­yes, I knew him well.  He had just arrived in London; very handsome in the face, though perhaps a little too fat.  He fell in love with an elegant young lady who was employed in the establishment of Madame Elise in Bond Street.  He used to wait for her to come out at six o’clock and follow her like a dog, not daring to speak.  He carried a costly bracelet for her in his pocket, and every day fresh flowers, which he was always too shy and too deeply enamoured to present.  She was his angel, his ideal.  He dreamt of her by day and night, wondering whether he would ever have the courage to address so tall and queenly a creature.  It was his first English love affair, you understand; he learnt the proper technique later on.  For five or six weeks this unhappy state of things continued, till one day, when he was running after her as usual, she turned round furiously and said:  ’What do you mean, sir, by following me about it this disgusting fashion?  How day you?  I shall call the police, if it occurs again.’  He was deprived of speech at first:  he could only gaze in what you call dumb amazement.  Then he managed to stammer out something about his heart and his love, and to show her the flowers and the bracelet.  She said:  ’So that’s it, is it?  Well of all the funny boys.  Why couldn’t you speak up sooner?  D’you know of a place round here—­’”