Slowly An Ancient Servitor, Whose Family Had Been In The Employ Of The
Falconieri For A Century, Advanced As With The Burden Of Their United
Years And Opened The High Gate To Us And Delivered Us Over To A Mild
Boy.
He bestowed on us, for a consideration, a bunch of wild violets,
and then, as if to keep us
From the too abrupt sight of the repairs and
changes going on near the casino, led us first to the fish-pond, in the
untouched seclusion of a wooded hill, and silently showed us the
magnificent view which the top commanded, if commanded is not too proud
a word for a place so pathetic in its endearing neglect. It had once
been the haunt of many a gay picnicking crew in hoops and bag-wigs and
all the faded fashion of the past, when hosts and guests had planned a
wilder escapade than the grove before the casino invited, with its
tables of moss-painted marble. There would have been an academic poet,
or more than one, in the company, and they would have furnished forth
the prospect with phrases far finer than any I have about me, who can
only say that the Cam-pagna, clothed in mist and cloud-shadowed, swam
round the upland in the colors of a tropic sea.
Our mild boy waited a decent moment, as if to let me do better, and then
led down to the casino, round through a wooded valley where there were
some men with fowling-pieces, whom I objected to in tones, if not in
terms.
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