Louis Couperus: 47 books

STEYN'S deep bass voice was heard in the passage: "Come, Jack, come along, dog! Are you coming with your master?" The terrier gave a loud, glad bark and came rushing madly down the stairs, till he seemed to be tumbling over his own paws. "Oh, that voice of Steyn's!"...

The Marchesa Belloni’s boarding-house was situated in one of the healthiest, if not one of the most romantic quarters of Rome. One half of the house had formed part of a villino of the old Ludovisi Gardens, those beautiful old gardens regretted by everybody who knew them before the new barrack-quarters...

Steyn's deep bass voice was heard in the passage: "Come, Jack, come along, dog! Are you coming with your master?" The terrier gave a loud, glad bark and came rushing madly down the stairs, till he seemed to be tumbling over his own paws. "Oh, that voice of Steyn's!" Ottilie hissed between her teeth...

Lipara, usually a city white as marble: long, white rows of villas on a southern blue sea; endless, elegant esplanades on the front, with palms whose green lacquer shimmered against an atmosphere of vivid blue ether. But to-day there drifted above it, heavily, a sombre, grey sky, fraught with storm...

The afternoon sky was full of thick, dark clouds, drifting ponderously grey over almost black violet: clouds so dark, heavy and thick that they seemed to creep laboriously upon the east wind, for all that it was blowing hard. In its breath the clouds now and again changed their watery outline, before...