The Villino in June smells very good, however, and that is gratifying. And to complete the catalogue there are the new pine shoots delicious and aromatic, stimulating and healthy; a perfect aroma on a hot day.
“Tell me your friends and I will tell you what you are,” says the sage; it sounds like a dog, but the Padrona feels that with one sniff she can sum up a character.
When Tréfle Incarnat, or its last variant, takes you by the throat, you needn’t look to see what kind of young woman is sitting beside you at the theatre.
And when a portly friend, resplendent in gorgeous sables, heralds her approach with a powerful blast of Napthaline, you know the kind of woman she is, and that the word “friend,” just written, is misapplied; for you never could make a friend of anyone so stuffily and stupidly careful.
And when you go to tea with an acquaintance—probably literary, living in Campden Hill and fond of bead blinds—and the smell of joss-stick floats upon the disgusted nostril from the doorway, you know the kind of party you are going to have. Your hostess will have surrounded herself with long-haired and dank-handed young men, the Postlethwaites of the period, and brilliant young females who wear a mauvy powder over rather an unwashed face, and curious garments cut square at the neck, and turquoise matrix ear-rings, very much veined with brown! Besides the joss-sticks there is cigarette smoke, and the atmosphere, morally as well as physically, is fusty!
Then there is the female who produces a bottle of Eau-de-Cologne on board ship. If it isn’t a German governess, it is a heated person with something purple about her and kid gloves—why pursue the horrid theme!
Let us end this divagation by a little anecdote as true as it is charming. It happened to a member of our own family. She was hurrying along one foggy November morning to the Brompton Oratory rather early; and the dreadful acrid vapour and the uncertain struggle of a grimy dawn contended against the glimmer of the gas-lamps. As she approached the steps of the church somebody crossed her, and instantly the whole air was filled with an exquisite fragrance as of violets. Involuntarily she started to look round, and her movement arrested, too, the passer-by. For a second they stood quite close to each other, and to our relative’s astonishment she saw only a small, meek-faced old lady in an Early Victorian bonnet wrapped in a very dowdy dolman.
The old lady gave a little smile and went her way. There was certainly no adornment of real violets about her, and to look at her was enough to be assured that artificial scents could never approach her.
The incident seemed strange enough to be worth making investigations, and the explanation was simple. The little old lady was very well known; mother of priests, a ceaseless worker among the poor; nearly eighty, and every day at seven o’clock Mass. Many people had remarked the scent of violets about her, and her friends thought, laughingly, it was because she was something of a saint.
This sweet-smelling saint died as she had lived. She had received the Last Sacraments; she knew her moments were numbered, but she sat up, propped by pillows, and went on knitting for the poor till the needles fell from her hands.