#this is my first experience w reading ouida

[britneyshakespeare]

"Go, with my curse upon you! stay with your mother's people; waste your days in foolish pleasures, and with singing women, and French jesters, and playwrights and scribblers; never blast my eyes with the sight of you as long as you live!" the furious old man had cried, in his rage, at his defeated projects; and Castiglione had answered not a syllable, but had left Rome that day, and had stayed away from it entirely for three years, until now, when the tidings of the prince's seizure had enforced his return, again, against his wishes. "Death is an ugly thing, Ruffino," he said this evening to his furry little friend. Discordant noises at that moment irritated his ear, and jangled harshly on the sweetness of the falling waters, the singing nightingales, the plaintive, mourning owls. Ruffino barked; he always conceived it to be his paramount duty to add his quota to any noise that he might ever hear.

Ruffino (1890) by Ouida, Chapter II