Louis Couperus

“ We feel perhaps ... more brutally and fully. We have redder blood. You have the gift of feeling nuances. We haven't. When I feel, I feel entirely. When Ottilie feels a thing now, she also feels it like that. But she was not always so."
"Aldo is making a southerner of me!" said Ottilie. "He is wiping out all my nuances!"
Outside, the mistral rose and raged in a whirl of glowing-copper plane-leaves.
"That's autumn," said Ottilie.
"Turning into winter," said Lot.
"But winter here is life again, renewed. Life is renewed daily. Every day that comes is new life." ”

“ On the side-board the fruit lay heaped in large, plain baskets and represented autumn's lavish abundance indoors as well.
"Lot," said Elly, suddenly, "I don't know what it is, but I suddenly feel the south."
"We poor northerners!" said Lot. "Ottilie and Aldo: they feel the south."
"But so do I!" said Elly.
"Nice is a novitiate for you, Elly, before you get to Italy!" said Ottilie. "Do you actually feel the south here? In the air?"
"Yes, in the air ... and in myself, in myself...."
"Well, we have tropical blood in us," said Ottilie. "Why shouldn't we feel the south at once? ”

“ Life does not renew itself there. It dies away, it passes; and the melancholy of it depresses even us, the young people.... Oh, Elly will not be really happy until she is in Italy!... This is only an intoxication, delicious, but too full and brutal for our senses; and there ... there, when we are working together, we shall find glad happiness: I know it! Glad happiness in a country not so sensual as Nice, but more intelligent and dusted exquisitely with the bloom of the dead past. ... Yes, we shall be in harmony there and happy and we shall work together...."
Aldo was opening the champagne ”