“Besides, I assure you, since I passed the gate I have experienced none but exquisite sensations here. This great garden seems to me delicious. It is impossible not to feel the poetry of its antiquity! Yesterday when I saw Oddo and Antonello in raptures over that almond blossom, as if they had never seen a flowering tree before, I thought everything here must be withered and dead. Instead of which I find within your gates a more enchanting display of spring than that which I left outside. Aren’t you tired with gathering violets in the grass? Your girdle is full of them.”
She smiled and looked down towards her waist, and with her bare fingers caressed the violets which adorned it.
“You come from the city,” she said. Her voice was musical but rather veiled, and the richness of its tone was a little exhausted, as if very slightly cracked; “you come from the city, and the country is offering you her firstfruits.”
“I don’t know how it is, but certain things always seem new.”
“We see these things no longer, and love them no longer,” said Oddo, with some melancholy. “Probably Violante cannot smell the scent of the flowers she picks.”
“Is that true?” I asked, turning to her. My eyes were struck by the profile of marble under her abundant hair and the motionless attitude, which reminded one of immortal statues.
“What were you saying?” she asked, like one returning from far off; she had not heard her brother’s words.
“Oddo says you cannot smell the scent of the flowers you pick. Is it true?”
A faint touch of red coloured her cheeks.
“Oh, no!” she answered, with a vivacity quite in contrast with the slow rhythm to which her life seemed set. “Don’t believe Oddo. He says that because I am fond of strong scents; but I can smell the faintest also, even those of the stones.”