Jettatura by Theophile Gautier

"JETTATURA! Jettatore! These words were certainly addressed to me," said Paul d'Aspre--mont to himself, as he returned to his hotel. "What they mean I do not know, but they were evidentlv intended for an insult or a mockery. What is there strange, peculiar, or ridiculous about me that attracts such unpleasant attention? Though one is not a good judge of one's self, it seems to me that I am neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor short, neither stout nor thin, and that I ought to be able to go about without attracting notice. There is nothing eccentric in my dress; I am not adorned with a turban with lighted tapers, like Mr. Jourdain in the cere--monial scene in the Bourgeois gentilhomme; I do not wear a jacket with a sun embroidered in gold on the back; I do not go about with a negro in front of me playing on the cymbals. My personality, which, for the matter of that, is wholly unknown in Naples, is concealed under the ordinary dress, the domino of modern civilisation, and I am in every respect like the dandies who walk up and down the Strada di Toledo or on the Largo del Palazzo Reale, save that I have a rather quieter necktie, not so large a breastpin, a less gorgeously embroidered shirt-front, not so loud a waistcoat, not so many gold chains, and that my hair is very much less curled.

"That may be it! My hair is perhaps not curled enough. To-morrow I shall have it done up by the hair-dresscr in the hotel."