And yet he was not for this reason fond of solitude; he was, on the contrary, a very sociable animal.

It must be admitted at the outset that he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict itself, as will probably be perceived in the course of this narration.
He entertained himself greatly with his reflections and meditations upon Sienese architecture and early Tuscan art, upon Italian street-life and the geological idiosyncrasies of the Apennines.

If he had only gone to the other inn, that nice-looking girl whom he had seen passing under the dusky portal with her face turned away from him might have broken bread with him at this intellectual banquet.

Then came a day, however, when it seemed for a moment that if she were disposed she might gather up the crumbs of the feast.

Longueville, every morning after breakfast, took a turn in the great square of Siena--the vast piazza, shaped like a horse-shoe, where the market is held beneath the windows of that crenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower springs up with a movement as light as that of a single plume in the bonnet of a captain.