Hoffmann, whom every one was still reading at that time.

And Frau Lenore still slept, and even snored just a little, and the
sunbeams, piercing in narrow streaks through the shutters, were
incessantly and imperceptibly shifting and travelling over the floor,
the furniture, Gemma's dress, and the leaves and petals of the
flowers.




XII


It appeared that Gemma was not very fond of Hoffmann, that she even
thought him ... tedious! The fantastic, misty northern element in
his stories was too remote from her clear, southern nature. 'It's
all fairy-tales, all written for children!' she declared with some
contempt. She was vaguely conscious, too, of the lack of poetry in
Hoffmann. But there was one of his stories, the title of which she
had forgotten, which she greatly liked; more precisely speaking, it
was only the beginning of this story that she liked; the end she had
either not read or had forgotten. The story was about a young man who
in some place, a sort of restaurant perhaps, meets a girl of striking
beauty, a Greek; she is accompanied by a mysterious and strange,
wicked old man. The young man falls in love with the girl at first
sight; she looks at him so mournfully, as though beseeching him to
deliver her.... He goes out for an instant, and, coming back into the
restaurant, finds there neither the girl nor the old man; he rushes
off in pursuit of her, continually comes upon fresh traces of her,