The Scandinavian Club was in the
building from which you enter the Mausoleum of Augustus, a colossal
building in the form of a cross, several storeys in height. A festival
had been got up on the flat roof for a benevolent object one of the
first evenings in April. You mounted the many flights of stairs and
suddenly found yourself, apparently, in an immense hall, but with no
roof save the stars, and brilliantly illuminated, but with lights that
paled in the rays of the Italian moon. We took part in the peculiarly
Italian enjoyment of watching balloons go up; they rose by fire, which
exhausted the air inside them and made them light. Round about the moon
we could see red and blue lights, like big stars; one balloon ignited up
in the sky, burst into bright flames, and looked very impressive.
Troops of young women, too, were sitting there, and dazzled anew a young
man who for a second time had given the slip to the old gentleman with
the scythe. There was one young servant girl from the country, in
particular, a child of thirteen or fourteen, to whom I called the
attention of the painters, and they went into ecstasies over her. The
type was the same as that which Raphael has reproduced in his Sistine
Madonna. Her clear, dark blue eyes had a look of maidenly shyness, and
of the most exquisite bashfulness, and yet a look of pride.
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