IN AN OLD GARDEN
Y
YOU think, perhaps, there are no gardens in Venice; that it is all a sweep of palace front and shimmering sea; that save for the oleanders bursting into bloom near the Iron Bridge, and the great trees of the Public Garden shading the flower-bordered walks, there are no half-neglected tangles where rose and vine run riot; where the plash of the fountain is heard in the stillness of the night, and tall cedars cast their black shadows at noonday.
Really, if you but knew it, almost every palace hides a garden nestling beneath its balconies, and every high wall hems in a wealth of green, studded with broken statues, quaint arbors festooned with purple grapes, and white walks bordered by ancient box; while every roof that falls beneath a window is made a hanging garden of potted plants and swinging vines.
BEYOND SAN ROSARIOBEYOND SAN ROSARIO
BEYOND SAN ROSARIO
BEYOND SAN ROSARIO
Step from your gondola into some open archway. A door beyond leads you to a court paved with marble flags and centred by a well with carved marble curb, yellow stained with age. Cross this wide court,pass a swinging iron gate, and you stand under rose-covered bowers, where in the olden time gay gallants touched their lutes and fair ladies listened to oft-told tales of love.
And not only behind the palaces facing the Grand Canal, but along the Zattere beyond San Rosario, away down the Giudecca, and by the borders of the lagoon, will you find gay oleanders flaunting red blossoms, and ivy and myrtle hanging in black-green bunches over crumbling walls.
In one of these hidden nooks, these abandoned cloisters of shaded walk and over-bending blossom, I once spent an autumn afternoon with my old friend, the Professor,—“Professor of Modern Languages and Ancient Legends,” as some of the more flippant of thehabituésof Florian’s were wont to style him. The old Frenchman had justly earned this title. He had not only made every tradition and fable of Venice his own, often puzzling and charming the Venetians themselves with his intimate knowledge of the many romances of their past, but he could tell most wonderful tales of the gorgeous fêtes of the seventeenth century, the social life of the nobility, their escapades, intrigues, and scandals.
If some fair Venetian had loved not wisely but too well, and, clinging to brave Lorenzo’s neck, had slipped down a rope ladder into a closely curtained, muffled-oared gondola, and so over the lagoon to Mestre, the old Frenchman could not only point out to you the very balcony, provided it were a palace balcony and not a fisherman’s window,—he despised thebourgeoisie,—but he could give you every feature of the escapade, from the moment the terror-stricken duenna missed her charge to that of the benediction of the priest in the shadowed isle. So, when upon the evening preceding this particular day, I accepted the Professor’s invitation to breakfast, I had before me not only his hospitality, frugal as it might be, but the possibility of drawing upon his still more delightful fund of anecdote and reminiscence.
Neither the day nor the hour had been definitely set. The invitation, I afterwards discovered, was but one of the many he was constantly giving to his numerous friends and haphazard acquaintances, evincing by its perfect genuineness his own innate kindness and his hearty appreciation of the many similar courtesies he was daily receiving at their hands. Indeed, to a man so delicately adjusted as the Professor and so entirely poor,it was the only way he could balance, in his own mind, many long-running accounts of, coffee for two at theCalcina, with a fish and a fruit salad, the last a specialty of the Professor’s—the oil, melons, and cucumbers being always provided by his host—or a dish ofrisotto, with kidneys and the like, at theBauer-Grünwald.
Nobody ever accepted these invitations seriously, that is, no one who knew the Professor at all well. In fact, there was a general impression existing among the many frequenters of Florian’s and theQuadrithat the Professor’s hour and place of breakfasting were very like the birds’—whenever the unlucky worm was found, and wherever the accident happened to occur. When I asked Marks for the old fellow’s address—which rather necessary item I remembered later had also been omitted by the Professor—he replied, “Oh, somewhere down the Riva,” and dropped the subject as too unimportant for further mental effort.
All these various eccentricities of my prospective host, however, were at the time unknown to me. He had cordially invited me to breakfast—“to-morrow, or any day you are near my apartments, I would be so charmed,” etc. I had as graciously accepted,and it would have been unpardonable indifference, I felt sure, not to have continued the inquiries until my hand touched his latch-string.
The clue was a slight one. I had met him once, leaning over the side of the bridge below Danieli’s, thePonte del Sepolcro, looking wistfully out to sea, and was greeted with the remark that he had that moment left his apartments, and only lingered on the bridge to watch the play of silvery light on the lagoon, the September skies were so enchanting. So on this particular morning I began inspecting the bell-pulls of all the doorways, making inquiry at the several caffès and shops. Then I remembered the apothecary, down one step from the sidewalk, in theVia Garibaldi—a rather shabby continuation of the Riva—and nearly a mile below the more prosperous quarter where the Professor had waved his hand, the morning I met him on the bridge.
“The Signor Croisac—the old Frenchman?” “Upstairs, next door.”
He was as delightful as ever in his greetings; started a little when I reminded him of his invitation, but begged me to come in and sit down, and with great courtesy pointed out the view of the garden below, and thesweep and glory of the lagoon. Then he excused himself, adjusted his hat, picked up a basket, and gently closed the door.
The room, upon closer inspection, was neither dreary nor uninviting. It had a sort of annex, or enlarged closet, with a drawn curtain partly concealing a bed, a row of books lining one wall, a table littered with papers, a smaller one containing a copper coffee-pot and a scant assortment of china, some old chairs, and a disemboweled lounge that had doubtless lost heart in middle life and committed hari-kari. There were also a few prints and photographs, a corner of the Parthenon, a mezzo of Napoleon in his cocked hat, and an etching or two, besides a miniature reduction of the Dying Gladiator, which he used as a paper-weight. All the windows of this modest apartment were filled with plants, growing in all kinds of pots and boxes, broken pitchers, cracked dishes—even half of a Chianti flask. These, like their guardian, ignored their surroundings and furnishings, and flamed away as joyously in the summer sun as if they had been nurtured in the choicest of majolica.
He was back before I had completed my inventory, thanking me again and again for my extreme kindness in coming, all thewhile unwrapping the Gorgonzola, and flecking off with a fork the shreds of paper that still clung to its edges. The morsel was then laid upon a broad leaf gathered at the window, and finally upon a plate covered by a napkin so that the flies should not taste it first. This, with a simple salad, a pot of coffee and some rolls, a siphon of seltzer and a little raspberry juice in a glass,—“so much fresher than wine these hot mornings,” he said,—constituted the entire repast.
But there was no apology offered with the serving. Poor as he was, he had that exquisite tact which avoided burdening his guest even with his economies. He had offered me all his slender purse could afford. Indeed, the cheese had quite overstrained it.
When he had drawn a cigarette from my case,—it was delightful to see him do this, and always reminded me of a young girl picking bonbons from a box, it was so daintily done,—the talk drifted into a discussion of the glories of the old days and of the welfare of Italy under the present government. I made a point of expressing my deep admiration for the good King Humbert and his gracious queen. The Professor merely waved his hand, adding:—
“Yes, a good man and a noble lady, worthysuccessors of the old régime!” Then, with a certain air, “I have known, professionally, very many of these great families. A most charming, delightful society! The women so exquisite, with such wealth of hair and eyes, and sogentilles: always of theBeau Monde! And their traditions and legends, so full of romance and mystery! The palaces too! Think of the grand staircase of the Foscari, the entrance to the Barbaro, and the superb ceilings of the Albrezzi! Then their great gardens and vine orchards! There is nothing like them. Do you happen to know the old garden on the Giudecca, where lived the beautiful Contessa Alberoni? No? And you never heard the romantic story of her life, her disappearance, and its dramatic ending?”
I shook my head. The Professor, to my delight, was now fairly in the saddle; the best part of the breakfast was to come.
“My dear friend! One of the most curious of all the stories of Venice! I know intimately many of her descendants, and I know, too, the old gardener who still cares for what is left of the garden. It has long since passed out of the hands of the family.
“Let me light another cigarette before I tell you,” said the Professor, crossing theroom, “and just another drop of seltzer,” filling my glass.
“Is it to be a true story?” I asked.
“Mon cher ami!absolutely so. Would you care to see the garden itself, where it all occurred, or will you take my word for it? No, not until you sit under the arbors and lean over the very balcony where the lovers sat. Come, is your gondola here? Under the window?” pushing aside the flowers. “Which is your gondolier? The one in blue with the whitetendaover his boat? Yes, sound asleep like all the rest of them!”
Here the old gentleman picked up his silk hat, passed his hand once or twice around its well-brushed surface, discarded it for a white straw with a narrow black band, adjusted his cravat in a broken mirror that hung near the door, gave an extra twist to his gray mustache, and preceded me downstairs and out into the blinding light of a summer day.
Several members of the Open-Air Club were hanging over the bridge as we passed—Luigi flat on his face and sound asleep in the shadow of the side-wall, and Vittorio sprawled out on the polished rail above. Those who were awake touched their hats respectfully to the old fellow as he crossed the bridge, he returning their salutations quite as a distinguishedearl would those of his tenants. Vittorio, when he caught my eye, sprang down and ran ahead to rouse Espero, and then back for Luigi, who awoke with a dazed look on his face, only regaining consciousness in time to wave his hat to me when we were clear of the quay, the others standing in a row enjoying his discomfiture.
“This garden,” continued the Professor, settling himself on the cushions and drawing the curtains so that he could keep the view toward San Giorgio and still shut out the dazzling light, “is now, of course, only a ghost of its former self. The château is half in ruins, and one part is inhabited by fishermen, who dry their nets in the grape arbors and stow their fish-baskets in the porticoes. Many of the fruit-trees, however, still exist, as do many of the vines, and so my old friend Angelo, the gardener, makes a scanty living for himself and his pretty daughter, by supplying the fruit-stands in the autumn and raising lettuce and melons in the spring and summer. The ground itself, like most of the land along the east side of the islands of the Giudecca, is valueless, and everything is falling into ruin.”
We were rounding the Dogana, Espero bending lustily to his oar as we shot past thewood-boats anchored in the stream. The Professor talked on, pointing out the palace where Pierre, the French adventurer, lived during the Spanish conspiracy, and the very side door in the old building, once a convent, from which an Englishman in the old days stole a nun who loved him, and spirited her off to another quaint nook in this same Giudecca, returning her to her cell every morning before daybreak.
“Ah, those were the times to live in. Then asoldowas as large as alira. Then a woman loved you for yourself, not for what you gave her. Then your gondolier kept your secrets, and the keel of your boat left no trace behind. Then your family crest meant something more than the name-plate on your door, upon which to nail a tax-levy.”
The old man had evidently forgotten his history, but I did not check him. It was his buoyant enthusiasm that always charmed me most.
As Espero passed under Ponte Lungo, the wooden bridge leading to theFondamenta della Pallada, the Professor waved his hand to the right, and we floated out into the lagoon and stopped at an old water-gate, its doors weather-stained and broken, over which hung a mass of tangled vines.
“The garden of the Contessa,” said the Professor, his face aglow with the expectancy of my pleasure.
It was like a dozen other water-gates I had seen, except that no gratings were open and the surrounding wall was unusually high. Once inside, however, with the gate swung-to on its rusty hinges, you felt instantly that the world had been shut away forever. Here were long arbors bordered by ancient box, with arching roofs of purple grapes. Against the high walls stood fragments of statues, some headless, some with broken arms or battered faces. Near the centre of the great quadrangle was a sunken basin, covered with mould, and green with the scum of stagnant water. In the once well-regulated garden beds the roses bloomed gayly, climbing over pedestal and statue, while the trumpet-flower and scarlet-creeper flaunted their colors high upon the crumbling walls overlooking the lagoon. At one end of this tangled waste rose the remains of a once noble château or summer home, built of stone in the classic style of architecture, the pediment of the porch supported by a row of white marble columns. Leaning against these columns stood old fish-baskets, used for the storing of live fish, while over the ruined arbors hung in greatfestoons the nets of a neighboring fisherman, who reserved this larger space for drying and mending his seines.
It was a ruin, and yet not a hopeless one. You could see that each year the flowers struggled into life again; that the old black cypresses, once trimmed into quaint designs, had still determined to live on, even without the care of their arboreal barber; that really only the pruning-knife and spade were needed to bring back the garden to its former beauty. And the solitude was there too, the sense of utter isolation, as if the outside world were across the sea, whither nor eye nor voice could follow.
Old Angelo and his pretty daughter—a pure type of the Venetian girl of to-day, as she stood expectantly with folded arms—met us at the gate, and led the way to a sort of summer-house, so thickly covered with matted vines that the sun only filtered through and fell in drops of gold, spattering the ground below. Here, encrusted with green mould, was a marble table of exquisite design, its circular top supported by a tripod with lions’ feet.
Angelo evidently knew my companion and his ways, for in a few moments the girl returned, bringing a basket of grapes, somefigs, and a flask of wine. The Professor thanked her, and then, dismissing her with one of his gentle hand-waves and brushing the fallen leaves from the stone bench with his handkerchief, sat down.
“And now, right here,” said the old fellow, placing his straw hat on the seat beside him, his gray hair glistening in the soft light, “right here, where she loved and died, I will tell you the story of the Contessa Alberoni.
“This most divine of women once lived in a grand old palace above the Rialto. She belonged to a noble family of Florence, whose ancestors fought with Philip, before the Campanile was finished. All over Italy she was known as the most beautiful woman of her day, and that, let me tell you, at a time when to be counted as beautiful in Venice was to be beautiful the world over. She was a woman,”—here the Professor rested his head on the marble seat and half closed his eyes, as if he were recalling the vision of loveliness from out his own past,—“well, one of those ideal women, with fathomless eyes and rounded white arms and throat; a Catherine Cornaro type, of superb carriage and presence. Titian would have lost his heart over the torrent of gold thatfell in masses about her shapely head, and Canova might have exhausted all his skill upon the outlines of her form.
“In the beginning of her womanhood, when yet barely sixteen, she had married, at her father’s bidding, a decrepit Italian count nearly thrice her age, who, in profound consideration of her sacrifice, died in a becoming manner within a few years of their marriage, leaving her his titles and estates. For ten years of her wedded life and after, she lived away off in the secluded villa of Valdagna, a small town nestling among the foothills of the Alps. Then, suddenly awakening to the power of her wonderful beauty, she took possession of the great palace on the Grand Canal above the Rialto. You can see it any day; and save that some of the spindles in the exquisite rose-marble balconies are broken and the façade blackened and weather-stained, the exterior is quite as it appeared in her time. The interior, however, owing to the obliteration of this noble family and the consequent decay of its vast estates, is almost a ruin. Every piece of furniture and all the gorgeous hangings are gone; together with the mantels, and the superb well-curb in the court below. Tell Espero to take you there some day. You will not only find the grandentrance blocked with wine casks, but my lady’s boudoir plastered over with cheap green paper and rented as cheaper lodgings to still cheaper tenants. Bah!”
Then the Professor, dropping easily and gracefully into a style of delivery as stilted as if he were remembering the very words of some old chronicle, told me how she had lived in this grand palace during the years of her splendor, the pride and delight of all who came under her magic spell, as easily Queen of Venice as Venice was Queen of the Sea. How at thirty, then in the full radiance of her beauty, beloved and besought by every hand that could touch her own, painters vied with each other in matching the tints of her marvelous skin; sculptors begged for models of her feet to grace their masterpieces; poets sang her praises, and the first musicians of Italy wrote the songs that her lovers poured out beneath her windows. How there had come a night when suddenly the whole course of her life was changed,—the night of a great ball given at one of the old palaces on the Grand Canal, the festivities ending with a pageant that revived the sumptuous days of the Republic, in which the Contessa herself was to take part.
When the long-expected hour arrived, shewas seen to step into her gondola, attired in a dress of the period, a marvel of velvet and cloth of gold. Then she disappeared as completely from human sight as if the waters of the canal had closed over her forever.
For days all investigation proved fruitless. The only definite clue came from her gondolier, who said that soon after the gondola had left the steps of her palace, the Contessa ordered him to return home at once; that on reaching the landing she covered her face with her veil and reëntered the palace. Later it was whispered that for many weeks she had not left her apartments. Then she sent for her father confessor, and at a secret interview announced her decision never again to appear to the world.
At this point of the story the Professor had risen from his seat and poured half the flagon in his glass. He was evidently as much absorbed in the recital as if it had all happened yesterday. I could see, too, that it appealed to those quaint, romantic views of life which, for all their absurdities, endeared the old fellow to every one who knew him.
“For a year,” he continued, “this seclusion was maintained; no one saw the Contessa, not even her own servants. Her meals were served behind a screen. Of course, allVenice was agog. Every possible solution of so strange and unexpected a seclusion was suggested and discussed.
“In the beginning of the following winter vague rumors reached the good father’s ears. One morning he left his devotions, and, waylaying her duenna outside the palace garden, pressed his rosary into her hands and said: ‘Take this to the Contessa.’” Here the Professor became very dramatic, holding out his hand with a quick gesture, as if it clasped the rosary. “‘Tell her that to-night, when San Giorgio strikes twelve, I shall be at the outer gate of the palace and must be admitted.’”
Then, pacing up and down the narrow arbor, his face flushed, his eyes glistening, the old fellow told the rest of the story. “When,” said he, “the hour arrived, the heavy grated door, the same through which you can now see the wine casks, was cautiously opened. A moment later the priest was ushered into a dimly lighted room, luxuriously furnished, and screened at one end by a silken curtain, behind which sat the Contessa. She listened while he told her how all Venice was outraged at her conduct, many hearts being grieved and many tongues dropping foul slander. He remonstrated with her about the life she was leading, condemningits selfishness and threatening the severest discipline. But neither threats nor the voice of slander intimidated the Contessa. She steadfastly avowed that her life had been blameless, and despite the earnest appeals of the priest persisted in the determination to live the rest of her days in quiet and seclusion. The most he was able to effect was a promise that within a month she would open the doors of her palace for one more great ball. Her friends would then be reassured and her enemies silenced.
“The records show that no such festival had been seen in Venice for many years. The palace was a blaze of light. So great was the crush of gondolas bringing their beauteous freight of richly dressed Venetians, that the traffic of the canal was obstructed for hours. Ten o’clock came, eleven, and still there was no Contessa to welcome her guests. Strange stories were set afloat. It was whispered that a sudden illness had overtaken her. Then, as the hours wore on, the terrible rumor gained credence, that she had been murdered by her servants, and that the report of her illness was only a cloak to conceal their crime.
“While the excitement was at its height, a man, in the costume of a herald, appearedin the greatsalonand announced the arrival of the hostess. As the hour struck twelve a curtain was drawn at the farther end of the room, revealing the Contessa seated upon a dais, superbly attired in velvet and lace, and brilliant with jewels. When the hum and wonder of the surprise had ceased, she arose, stood like a queen receiving the homage of her subjects, and, welcoming her guests to her palace, bade them dance on until the sun rose over the Lido. Then the curtains were drawn, and so ended the last sight of the Contessa in Venice. Her palace was never opened again. Later she disappeared completely, and the spiders spun their webs across the threshold.
“Years afterward, a man repairing a high chimney on a roof overlooking this very garden—the chimney can still be seen from the far corner below the landing—saw entering the arbor a noble lady, leaning upon the arm of a distinguished looking man of about her own age. In the lady he recognized the Contessa.
“Little by little, the story came out. It appeared that immediately after the ball she had moved to this château, a part of her own estates, which had been quietly fitted up and restored. It was then remembered that soonafter the château had been finished, a certain Marquis, well known in France, who had adored the Contessa for years, and was really the only man she ever loved, had disappeared from Paris. He was traced at the time to Milan and Genoa, and finally to Venice. There all trace of him was lost. Such disappearances were not uncommon in those days, and it was often safer even for one’s relatives to shrug their shoulders and pass on. Further confirmation came from the gondolier, who had landed him the night of his arrival at the water-gate of this garden,—just where we landed an hour ago,—and who, on hearing of his supposed murder, had kept silent upon his share in the suspected crime. Inquiries conducted by the State corroborated these facts.
“Look around you,mon ami,” exclaimed the Professor suddenly. “Underneath this very arbor have they sat for hours, and in the window of that crumbling balcony have they listened to the low sound of each other’s voice in the still twilight, the world shut out, the vine-covered wall their only horizon. Here, as the years passed unheeded, they dreamed their lives away.L’amour, l’amour, vous êtes tout puissant!”
The Professor stopped, turned as if in pain,and rested his head on his arm. For some moments neither of us spoke. Was the romance to which I had listened only the romance of the Contessa, or had he unconsciously woven into its meshes some of the silken threads of his own past? When he raised his head I said: “But, Professor, you have not told me the secret she kept from the priest. Why did she shut herself up? What was it that altered the whole course of her life?”
“Did I not tell you? Then listen. She had overheard her gondolier say, as she stepped into her gondola on the fatal night of the great fête at the Foscari, ‘The Contessa is growing old; she is no longer as beautiful as she was.’”
I looked at the old fellow to see if he were really in earnest, and, throwing back my head, laughed heartily. For the first time in all my intercourse with him I saw the angry color mount to his cheeks.
He turned quickly, looked at me in astonishment, as if unable to believe his ears, and said sharply, knitting his brows, “Why do you laugh?”
“It seems so absurd,” I replied. “What did she expect; to be always a goddess?”
“Ah, there you go!” he burst out again,with flashing eyes. “That is just like a cold-blooded materialist. I hate your modern Shylock, who can see a pound of flesh cut from a human heart with no care for the hot blood that follows. Have you no sympathy deep down in your soul for a woman when she realizes for the first time that her hold on the world is slipping? Can you not understand the agony of the awakening from a long dream of security and supremacy, when she finds that others are taking her place? The daily watching for the loss of color, the fullness of the waist, the penciling of care-lines about the eyes? We men have bodily force and mental vigor, and sometimes lifelong integrity, to commend us, and as we grow older and the first two fail, the last serves us best of all; but what has a woman like the Contessa left? I am not talking of an ordinary woman, nor of all the good daughters, good wives, and good mothers in the world. You expect in such women the graces of virtue, duty, and resignation. I am talking of a superb creature whom the good God created just to show the world what the angels looked like. I insist that before you laugh you must put yourself in the place of this noble Contessa whom all Venice adored, whose reign for fifteen years had been supreme,whose beauty was to her something tangible, a weapon, a force, an atmosphere. She had all the other charms that adorned the women of her day, good-humor, a rich mind, charity, and wit, but so had a hundred other Venetians of her class. I insist that before censuring her, you enter thesalonand watch with her the faces of her guests, noting her eagerness to detect the first glance of delight or disappointment, and her joy or chagrin as she reads the verdict in their eyes. Can you not realize that in a beauty such as hers there is an essence, a spirit, a something divine and ethereal? A something like the bloom on these grapes, adding the exquisite to their lusciousness; like the pure color of the diamond, intensifying its flash? A something that, in addition to all her other qualities, makes a woman transcendent and should make her immortal? We men long for this divine quality, adore it, go mad over it; and yet when it has faded, with an inconstancy and neglect which to me is one of the enigmas of human nature, we shrug our shoulders, laugh, and pass on. Believe me,mon ami, when that gondolier confirmed the looking-glass of the Contessa, his words fell upon her ears like earth upon her coffin.”
If the Professor’s emotion at the close of the story was a surprise to me, this frenzied outburst, illogical and quixotic as it seemed, was equally unexpected. I could hardly realize that this torrent of fiery passion and pent-up energy had burst from the frail, plain little body before me. Again and again, as I looked at him, the thought ran through my mind, Whom had he loved like that? What had come between himself and his own Contessa? Why was this man an exile—this cheery, precise, ever courteous dignified old thoroughbred, with his dry, crackling exterior, and his volcano of a heart beneath? Or was it Venice, with her wealth of traditions,—traditions he had made his own,—that had turned his head?
Long after the Professor left the garden, I sat looking about me, noting the broken walls overhung with matted vines, and the little lizards darting in and out. Then I strolled on and entered the doorway of the old château, and looked long and steadily at the ruined balcony, half buried in a tangle of roses, the shadows of their waving blossoms splashing the weather-stained marble; and thence to the apartment above, where these same blossoms thrust themselves far into its gloom, as if they too would search for the vision of lovelinessthat had vanished. Then I wandered into an alcove sheltering the remains of an altar and font—the very chapel, no doubt, where the good priest had married her; on through the unkept walks bordered on each side by rows of ancient box, with here and there a gap where the sharp tooth of some winter more cruel than the rest had bitten deep, and so out again into the open garden, where I sat down under a great tree that sheltered the head of a Madonna built into the wall—the work of Canova, the Professor had told me.
Despite my own convictions, I seem to feel the presence of these spirits of the past that the Professor, in his simple, earnest way, had conjured up before me, and to see on every hand evidences of their long life of happiness. The ruined balcony, with its matted rose vines, had now a deeper meaning. How often had the beautiful Venetian leaned over this same iron grating and watched her lover in the garden below! On how many nights, made glorious by the radiance of an Italian moon, had they listened to the soft music of passing gondolas beyond the garden walls?
The whole romance, in spite of its improbability and my thoughtless laughter, had affected me deeply. Why, I could not tell.Perhaps it was the Professor’s enthusiasm; perhaps his reverence for the beauty of woman, as well as for the Contessa herself. Perhaps he had really been recalling a chapter out of his own past, before exile and poverty had made him a wanderer and a dreamer. Perhaps!—Yes, perhaps it was the thought of the long, quiet life of the Contessa with her lover in this garden.