'Yes; but she will forgive us the minute we say Napoleon, for that bad little man is one of her heroes,' added Mat, pretending to be admiring the view, while she privately examined a lady in a bower below—a stout, dark lady, with all the family traits so strongly marked that there could be no doubt of the young man's assertion.
Presently he came back with an affable old gentleman, who evidently had an eye to the main chance; for, in spite of his elegance and affability, he asked a great price for his rooms, and felt that any untitled stranger should be glad to pay well for the honour of living under the roof of a Buonaparte.
Amanda left the decision to her invisible duenna, and with a profusion of compliments and thanks, they got away, being gallantly escorted to the gate by the young count, who filled their hands with flowers, and gazed pensively after them, as if he found the society of two bright American girls very agreeable after that of his lofty parents, or the peasantry of the town.
Home they ran and bounced in upon Livy, blooming and breathless, to pour out their tale, and suggest an immediate departure to the blissful spot where counts and crocuses flourished with Italian luxuriance.
But after the first excitement had subsided, Lavinia put a wet blanket on the entire plan by declaring that she would never board with any grasping old patrician, who would charge for every bow, and fall back on his ancestors if he was found cheating. She would go and look at the place, but not enter it, nor be beholden to the resident Apollo for so much as a dandelion.
So the mourning damsels led the griffin over the viaduct, through the dirty little town, by the villa on its least attractive side. Up at the window were the two little Napoleonic heads, with big, black eyes, strong chins, and dark hair streaked across wide, olive-coloured foreheads. A vision of papa was visible in the garden pruning a vine with gloves on his aristocratic hands, and a shabby velvet coat on his highly connected back. Also, afar off on the balcony—oh, sight to touch a maiden's heart!—was the young count gazing wistfully towards Albano. He did not see the charmers as they crept down the rough road close to the garden wall, and went sadly home, along the blooming path, to the 'Tomb of the Four Thimbles,' as Livy irreverently called the ruin which has an ornament at each of its corners like a gigantic thimble of stone.
A note in Amanda's most elegant French, declining the apartments in the name of Madame Duenna, closed the door of this Eden upon the wandering peris, who entered never more. Now and then, as they went clattering by on their donkeys to Lake Nemi, or some other picturesque spot,
They saw again the crocus bloom,
And, leaning from that lofty room,
Sir Launcelot with face of gloom