Our Driver Decided For Us To Go First To The Villa Falconieri, Which Had
Lately Been Bought And Presented By A Fond Subject To The German
Emperor, And By Him In Turn Bestowed On The German Academy At Rome.
In
the cold, clean, stony streets of Frascati, as we rattled through them,
there breathed the odor of the
Great local industry; and the doorways of
many buildings, widening almost in a circle to admit the burly tuns of
wine, testified how generally, how almost universally, the vintage of
that measureless acreage of grapes around the place employed the
inhabitants. But there was little else to impress the observer in
Frascati, and we willingly passed out of the town in the road climbing
the long incline to the Villa Fal-conieri, with its glimpses, far and
near, of woods and gardens. It was a road so much to our minds that
nothing was further from us than the notion that our horse might not
like it so well; but, at the first distinct rise, he stopped and wheeled
round so abruptly, after first pawing the air, that there could be no
doubt where the popular interest we had lately enjoyed in Frascati had
really originated. Probably our horse's distinguishing trait was known
to everybody in Frascati except his driver. He, at least, showed the
greatest surprise at the horse's behavior, as unprecedented in their
acquaintance, which he owned was brief, for he had bought him in Rome
only the week before. With successive retreats to level ground he put
him again and again at the incline, but as soon as the horse felt the
ground rising under his feet he lifted them from it and whirled round
for another retreat. All this we witnessed from an advantageotis point
at the roadside which we had taken up at his first show of reluctance;
and at last the driver suggested that we should leave it and go on to
the Villa Falconieri on foot. On our part, we suggested that he should
attempt some other villa which would not involve an objectionable climb.
He then proposed the Villa Mandragone, and the horse seemed to agree
with us. As we drove again through the clean, cold, stony streets, with
the rounded doorways for the wine-casks, we fancied something clearly
ironical in the general interest renewed by our return. But we tried to
look as if we had merely done the Villa Falconieri with unexampled
rapidity, and pushed on to the Villa Mandragone, where, under the roof
of interlacing ilex toughs, our horse ought to have been tempted on in a
luxurious unconsciousness of anything like an incline. But he was
apparently an animal which would have felt the difference between two
rose-leaves and one in a flowery path, and just when we were thinking
what a delightful time we were having, and beginning to feel a gentle
question as to who the pathetic little cripple halting toward us with a
color-box and a camp-stool might be, and whether she painted as well as
a kind heart could wish, our horse stopped with the suddenness which we
knew to be definite.
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