“You 'll find him in his room. He usually dines alone, and I believe Temple is the only one admitted.”
“I 'll send up my name,” said he, rising to ring the bell for the servant: “and I 'll call myself lucky if he'll refuse to see me.”
“His Lordship will be glad to see Mr. Cutbill as soon as convenient to him,” replied the servant on his return.
“All my news for him is not so favorable as this,” whispered Cutbill, as he moved away. “They won't touch the mine in the City. That last murder, though it was down in Tipperary, a hundred and fifty miles away from this, has frightened them all; and they say they 're quite ready to do something at Lagos, or the Gaboon, but nothing here. 'You see,' say they, 'if they cut one or two of our people's heads off in Africa, we get up a gun-brig, and burn the barracoons and slaughter a whole village for it, and this restores confidence; but in Ireland it always ends with a debate in the House, that shows the people to have great wrongs and great patience, and that their wild justice, as some one called it, was all right; and that sir, that does not restore confidence.' Good-night!”
CHAPTER XXVII. THE VILLA ALTIERI.
There is a short season in which a villa within the walls of old Rome realizes all that is positive ecstasy in the life of Italy. This season begins usually towards the end of February, and continues through the month of March. This interval—which in less favored lands is dedicated to storms of rain and sleet, east winds and equinoctial gales, tumbling chimney-pots and bronchitis—is here signalized by all that Spring, in its most voluptuous abundance, can pour forth. Vegetation comes out, not with the laggard step of northern climes,—slow, cautious, and distrustful,—but bursting at once from bud to blossom, as though impatient for the fresh air of life and the warm rays of the sun. The very atmosphere laughs and trembles with vitality. From the panting lizard on the urn to the myriad of insects on the grass, it is life everywhere; and over all sweeps the delicious odor of the verbena and the violet, almost overpowering with perfume, so that one feels, in such a land, the highest ecstasy of existence is that same dreamy state begotten of impressions derived from blended sense, where tone and tint and odor mingle almost into one. Perhaps the loveliest spot of Rome in this loveliest of seasons was the Villa Altieri. It stood on a slope of the Pincian, defended from north and east, and looking eastward over the Campagna towards the hills of Albano. A thick ilex grove, too thick and dark for Italian, though perfect to English taste, surrounded the house, offering alleys of shade that even the noonday's sun found impenetrable; while beneath the slope, and under shelter of the hill, lay a delicious garden, memorable by a fountain designed by Thorwaldsen, where four Naiades splash the water at each other under the fall of a cataract,—this being the costly caprice of the Cardinal Altieri, to complete which he had to conduct the water from the Lake of Albano. Unlike most Italian gardens, the plants and shrubs were not merely those of the south, but all that the culture of Holland and England could contribute to fragrance and color were also there, and the gorgeous tulips of the Hague, the golden ranunculus and crimson carnation, which attain their highest beauty in moister climates, here were varied with chrysanthemums and camellias. Gorgeous creepers trailed from tree to tree or gracefully trained themselves around the marble groups, and clusters of orange-trees, glittering with golden fruit, relieved in their darker green the almost too glaring brilliancy of color.
At a window which opened to the ground—and from which a view of the garden, and beyond the garden the rich woods of the Borghese Villa, and beyond these again, the massive dome of St. Peter's, extended—sat two ladies, so wonderfully alike that a mere glance would have proclaimed them to be sisters. It is true the Countess Balderoni was several years older than Lady Augusta Bramleigh; but whether from temperament or the easier flow of an Italian life in comparison with the more wearing excitement of an English existence, she certainly looked little, if anything, her senior.
They were both handsome,—at least, they had that character of good looks which in Italy is deemed beauty; they were singularly fair, with large, deep-set blue-gray eyes, and light brown hair of a marvellous abundance and silkiest fibre. They were alike soft-voiced and gentle-mannered, and alike strong-willed and obstinate, of an intense selfishness, and very capricious.
“His eminence is late this evening,” said Lady Augusta, looking at her watch. “It is nigh eight o'clock.”