On our way back, Verney showed us a path leading up the cliff. "Let me give you a glimpse of a lovely garden," he said. We looked up, and there it was on the cliff above us, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, green terraces clothing the bare gray rock with beautiful verdure. Margaret left the phaeton and went up the winding path with us, Mrs. Trescott and Mrs. Clary remaining below. The gate of the garden, which bore the inscription "Salvete Amici," opened upon a long columned walk; from pillar to pillar over our heads ran climbing vines, and on each side were ranks of rare and curious plants, the lovely wild flowers of the country having their place also among the costlier blossoms. "Before you go farther turn and look at the tower," said Verney. "It has been made habitable within, but otherwise it is unchanged. It was built either as a lookout in which to keep watch for the Saracens, or else by the Saracens themselves when they held the coast."
"By the Sarrasins themselves, of course—always with two r's," said Janet. "Think of it—a Sarrasin tower! I would rather own it than anything else in the whole world."
Whereupon Verney, Inness, the Professor, Lloyd, and Baker all wished to know what she would do with it.
"Do with it?" repeated Janet. "Live in it, of course. I have always had the greatest desire to live in a tower; even light-houses tempt me."
"I shall tell Dr. Bennet," said Verney, laughing. "This is his garden, you know."
At the end of the columned walk we went around a curve by a smaller tower, and descended to a lower path bordered with miniature groves of hyacinth, whose dense sweetness, mingled with that of heliotrope, filled the air. Here Margaret seated herself to enjoy the fragrance and sunshine, while we went onward, coming to a magnificent array of primulas, rank upon rank, in every shade of delicate and gorgeous coloring, a pomp of tints against a background of ferns. Below was a little vine-covered terrace with thick, soft, English grass for its velvet flooring; here was another paradisiacal little seat, like the one where we had left Margaret, overlooking the blue sea. On terraces above were camellias, roses, and numberless other blossoms, mingled with tropical plants and curious growths of cacti; behind was a lemon grove rising a little higher; then the background of gray rocks from which all this beauty had been won inch by inch; then the great peaks of the mountain amphitheatre against the sky—in all, beauty enough for a thousand gardens here concentrated in one enchanting spot.
"That picturesque village on the height is Grimaldi," said Verney.
"The original home of the clowns, I suppose," said Baker.