Peter very likely slept but little, that first night at the

villa; and more than once, I fancy, he repeated to his pillow

his pious ejaculation of the afternoon: "What luck! What

supernatural luck!" He was up, in any case, at an

unconscionable hour next morning, up, and down in his garden.

"It really is a surprisingly jolly garden," he confessed. "The

agent was guiltless of exaggeration, and the photographs were

not the perjuries one feared."

There were some fine old trees, lindens, acacias, chestnuts, a

flat-topped Lombardy pine, a darkling ilex, besides the willow

that overhung the river, and the poplars that stiffly stood

along its border. Then there was the peacock-blue river

itself, dancing and singing as it sped away, with a thousand

diamonds flashing on its surface--floating, sinking, rising

--where the sun caught its ripples. There were some charming

bits of greensward.

There was a fountain, plashing melodious

coolness, in a nimbus of spray which the sun touched to rainbow

pinks and yellows. There were vivid parterres of flowers,

begonia and geranium. There were oleanders, with their heady

southern perfume; there were pomegranate-blossoms, like knots

of scarlet crepe; there were white carnations, sweet-peas,

heliotrope, mignonette; there were endless roses. And there

were birds, birds, birds.

Everywhere you heard their joyous

piping, the busy flutter of their wings. There were

goldfinches, blackbirds, thrushes, with their young--the

plumpest, clumsiest, ruffle-feathered little blunderers, at the

age ingrat, just beginning to fly, a terrible anxiety to their

parents--and there were also (I regret to own) a good many

rowdy sparrows. There were bees and bumblebees; there were

brilliant, dangerous-looking dragonflies; there were

butterflies, blue ones and white ones, fluttering in couples;

there were also (I am afraid) a good many gadflies--but che

volete? Who minds a gadfly or two in Italy? On the other side

of the house there were fig-trees and peach-trees, and

artichokes holding their heads high in rigid rows; and a vine,

heavy with great clusters of yellow grapes, was festooned upon

the northern wall.

The morning air was ineffably sweet and keen--penetrant, tonic,

with moist, racy smells, the smell of the good brown earth, the

smell of green things and growing things. The dew was spread

over the grass like a veil of silver gossamer, spangled with

crystals. The friendly country westward, vineyards and white

villas, laughed in the sun at the Gnisi, sulking black in

shadow to the east. The lake lay deep and still, a dark

sapphire. And away at the valley's end, Monte Sfiorito, always

insubstantial-seeming, showed pale blue-grey, upon a sky in

which still lingered some of the flush of dawn.




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