The curé laughed, delighted. "Luckily for me it is real," he said. "And now that you are in it, my Principino—my one-time pupil, my all-time friend—it is perfect. I should like you to love it. I should like—yes, I should like some great happiness to come into your life here. That is an odd fancy, isn't it? for the great happiness seems likely to be mine in having you with me. But the idea sprang into my mind."
"It is a good idea," said Vanno. "I should like it to come true. I have a favour to ask you, and perhaps—who knows?—your granting it may somehow bring the wish to pass."
A tiny figure of a woman—so old, so fragile as to look as if she were made of transparent porcelain—appeared as he spoke from an arbour at the far end of the little garden, an arbour whose grapevines hung bannerlike over the precipice. She had a dish in her minute, wrinkled hands, and was so surprised at sight of the tall young stranger that she nearly dropped it.
"My little housekeeper," explained the curé. "She comes to me for a few hours every day, to keep me fed and tidy; and she brings my meals here to the arbour when the weather is fine; for I never tire of the view, and it gives me an appetite that nothing else does."
"I see now why your letters have always been so happy," Vanno said, "and why, when it was offered, you refused promotion in order to stay here."
"Oh, yes, I am very happy, thank Heaven, and I do my best to make others so. God loves mirth. Dulness is of the devil! I love the place and the people, and the people love me, I trust," the curé answered, with a bright and curiously spiritual smile which transfigured the sunburned face. "You have no idea, my Principino, of the thousand interests we have here in this little mountain village. Once it was of great importance. An English king came in the fourteenth century to visit the Lascaris family at the castle. Those down below hardly know of its existence, even those who come back year after year, but Roquebrune and my garden are world enough for me. Is breakfast ready, Mademoiselle Luciola? Thanks; we will begin as soon as you have brought things to lay another place. Is that not a good name for the wee body—Firefly? Oh, but you should see our fireflies here in May, when the Riviera is supposed to be wiped off the map, not existent till winter. And the glow-worms. I have three in my garden. No garden is complete without at least one glow-worm. I had to beg my first from a neighbour."
"I should like to live up here, and be your neighbour, and cultivate glow-worms," said Vanno, as his host guided him along a narrow path which led between flower-beds to the arbour.
"Why not?" cried the priest, enraptured. "You could buy beautiful land, a plateau of orange trees and olives, carpeted with violets—the petite campagne I spoke of. You could build a villa, small enough to shut up and put to sleep when you tired of it. We would be your caretakers, the old Mademoiselle and I."
"Would you have me live in my villa alone?" Vanno smiled.
The curé looked merrily sly. "Why not with a bride?" he ventured. "Why not follow your brother Angelo's example?"