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!

I