Savoyard.  Did Byron say that?

The count.  He did, sir.

Savoyard.  It dont sound like him.  I saw a good deal of him at one time.

The count.  You!  But how is that possible?  You are too young.

Savoyard.  I was quite a lad, of course.  But I had a job in the original production of Our Boys.

The count.  My dear sir, not that Byron.  Lord Byron, the poet.

Savoyard.  Oh, I beg your pardon.  I thought you were talking of the
Byron.  So you prefer living abroad?

The count.  I find England ugly and Philistine.  Well, I dont live in it.  I find modern houses ugly.  I dont live in them:  I have a palace on the grand canal.  I find modern clothes prosaic.  I dont wear them, except, of course, in the street.  My ears are offended by the Cockney twang:  I keep out of hearing of it and speak and listen to Italian.  I find Beethoven’s music coarse and restless, and Wagner’s senseless and detestable.  I do not listen to them.  I listen to Cimarosa, to Pergolesi, to Gluck and Mozart.  Nothing simpler, sir.

Savoyard.  It’s all right when you can afford it.

The count.  Afford it!  My dear Mr Savoyard, if you are a man with a sense of beauty you can make an earthly paradise for yourself in Venice on 1500 pounds a year, whilst our wretched vulgar industrial millionaires are spending twenty thousand on the amusements of billiard markers.  I assure you I am a poor man according to modern ideas.  But I have never had anything less than the very best that life has produced.  It is my good fortune to have a beautiful and lovable daughter; and that girl, sir, has never seen an ugly sight or heard an ugly sound that I could spare her; and she has certainly never worn an ugly dress or tasted coarse food or bad wine in her life.  She has lived in a palace; and her perambulator was a gondola.  Now you know the sort of people we are, Mr Savoyard.  You can imagine how we feel here.

Savoyard.  Rather out of it, eh?

The count.  Out of it, sir!  Out of what?

Savoyard.  Well, out of everything.

The count.  Out of soot and fog and mud and east wind; out of vulgarity and ugliness, hypocrisy and greed, superstition and stupidity.  Out of all this, and in the sunshine, in the enchanted region of which great artists alone have had the secret, in the sacred footsteps of Byron, of Shelley, of the Brownings, of Turner and Ruskin.  Dont you envy me, Mr Savoyard?

Savoyard.  Some of us must live in England, you know, just to keep the place going.  Besides—­though, mind you, I dont say it isnt all right from the high art point of view and all that—­three weeks of it would drive me melancholy mad.  However, I’m glad you told me, because it explains why it is you dont seem to know your way about much in England.  I hope, by the way, that everything has given satisfaction to your daughter.