So Far From Accepting Our Modest Standards
Of Time And Money, He All But Persuaded Us To Employ Him For The Whole
Day Instead Of A Few Hours At A Price Beyond Our Imagination; And He
Only Consented To Compromise On A Half-Day At An Increased Figure.
We supposed that it was the negotiation which drew and held the
attention of all the leisure of Frascati,
And that it was the driver and
our relation to him rather than the horse and our relation to it that
concentrated the public interest in us; and when we had convinced him
that we had no wish but to see some of the more immediate and memorable
villas, we mounted to our places in the victoria and drove out through
the reluctantly parting spectators, who remained looking after us as if
unable to disperse to their business or pleasure.
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.
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