[CHAPTER II]
Schifanoja was situated on the heights at that point where the chain of hills, after following the curving coast line, took a landward bend and sloped away towards the plain. Notwithstanding that it had been built in the latter half of the eighteenth century—by the Cardinal Alfonso Carafa d'Ateleta—the villa showed a certain purity of architectural design. It was a square building of two stories, with arched colonnades alternating with the apartments, which imparted to the whole edifice a look of lightness and grace. It was a real summer palace, open on all sides to the breath of the sea. At the side towards the sloping gardens, a wide hall opened on to a noble double flight of steps leading to a platform like a vast terrace, surrounded by a stone balustrade and adorned by two fountains. At either end of this terrace, other flights of steps interrupted by more terraces led by easy stages almost to the sea, affording a full view from the level ground of their seven-fold windings through superb verdure and masses of roses. The special glories of Schifanoja were its cypresses and its roses. Roses were there of every kind and for every season, enough 'pour en tirer neuf ou dix muytz d'eaue rose' as the poet of the Vergier d'honneur would have said. The cypresses, sharp-pointed and sombre, more hieratic than the Pyramids, more enigmatic than the obelisks, were in no respect inferior either to those of the Villa d'Este, or the Villa Mondragone or any of the giants growing round the glorious Roman villas.
The Marchesa d'Ateleta was in the habit of spending the summer and part of the autumn at Schifanoja; for, though a thorough woman of the world, she was fond of the country and its freedom, and liked to keep open house there for her friends. She had lavished every care and attention upon Andrea during his illness; had been to him like an elder sister, almost a mother, and untiring in her devotion. She cherished a profound affection for her cousin, was ever ready to excuse or pardon, was a good and frank friend to him, capable of understanding many things, always at his beck and call, always cheerful, always bright and witty. Although she had overstepped the thirties by a year, she had lost nothing of her youth, vivacity and great personal charm, for she possessed the secret of Madame de Pompadour's fascination, that 'beauté sans traits' which lights up with unexpected graces. Moreover, she possessed that rare gift commonly called tact. A fine feminine sense of the fitness of things was an infallible guide to her. In her relations with a host of acquaintances of either sex she always succeeded in steering her course discreetly; she never committed an error of taste, never weighed heavily on the lives of others, never arrived at an inopportune moment nor became importunate, no deed or word of hers but was entirely to the point. Her treatment of Andrea during the somewhat trying period of his convalescence was beyond all praise. She did her utmost to avoid disturbing or annoying him, and, what is more, managed that no one else should; she left him complete liberty, pretended not to notice his whims and melancholies; never worried him with indiscreet questions; made her company sit as lightly as possible on him at obligatory moments, and even went so far as to refrain from her usual witty remarks in his presence to save him the trouble of forcing a smile.
Andrea recognised her delicacy and was profoundly grateful.
Returning from the garden with unwonted lightness of heart on that September morning after writing his sonnets on the Hermes, he encountered Donna Francesca on the steps, and, kissing her hand, he exclaimed in laughing tones:
'Cousin Francesca, I have found the Truth and the Way!
'Alleluja!' she returned, lifting up her fair rounded arms,—'Alleluja!'
And she continued on her way down to the garden while Andrea went on to his room with heart refreshed.
A little while afterwards there came a gentle knock at the door and Francesca's voice asking—'May I come in?'
She entered with the lap of her dress and both arms full of great clusters of dewy roses, white, yellow, crimson, russet brown. Some were wide and transparent like those of the Villa Pamfili, all fresh and glistening, others were densely petalled, and with that intensity of colouring which recalls the boasted magnificence of the dyes of Tyre and Sidon; others again were like little heaps of odorous snow, and gave one a strange desire to bite into them and eat them. The infinite gradations of red, from violent crimson to the faded pink of over-ripe strawberries, mingled with the most delicate and almost imperceptible variations of white, from the immaculate purity of freshly fallen snow to the indefinable shades of new milk, the sap of the reed, dull silver, alabaster and opal.