Long-windedly

[…] an Italian piece of many parts and much intricacy—it is only a Master Braham or Madame Catalani who has got throat long enough and flexible enough for it; which stretching out as gracefully as a hen drinketh water, she cackles out the whole piece as sweetly as Orpheus, as dexterously as a fiddler’s elbow, as long-windedly as the pipe of an ass, and as proudly as if she had laid a golden egg.

One who had caught a glimpse of the shining yet solemn eyes of the youth, as he walked home, would wonder no longer that he should talk as he did—so sedately, yet so poetically—so long-windedly, if you like, yet so sensibly—even wisely.

1962, Isaac Babel quoted by Konstantin Paustovsky in “Reminiscences of Babel” in Patricia Blake and Max Hayward (editors), Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature, New York: Pantheon, p. 50, Perhaps my sentences are too short. This may be partly due to my chronic asthma. I can’t talk long-windedly; I’m short of breath.

But then I thought, perhaps this is how these Dutch Protestants behave when they fall in love: prudently, long-windedly, without fire, without grace.