The road from here on led through a wild and somewhat forbidding country, broken by ravines and watercourses and quite densely wooded with thickets which swept upward into the interior as far as the eye could reach; but in the neighborhood of Terranova the land blossomed and flowered again as on the other side of the mountains.
Leaving the main road by a driveway, the three horsemen swung through spacious grounds and into a courtyard behind the house, where an old man came shuffling slowly forward, his wrinkled face puckered into a smile of welcome.
"Ha! Aliandro!" cried the Count. "What do I see? The rheumatism is gone at last, grazie Dio!"
Aliandro's loose lips parted over his toothless gums and he mumbled:
"Illustrissimo, the accursed affliction is worse."
"Impossible! Then why these capers? My dear Aliandro, you are shamming.
Why, you came leaping like a goat."
"As God is my judge, carino, I can sleep only in the sun. It is like the tortures of the devil, and my bones creak like a gate."
"And yet each day I declare to myself: 'Aliandro, that rascal, is growing younger as the hours go by. It is well we are not rivals in love or I should be forced to hate him!'" The old man chuckled and beamed upon Savigno, who proceeded to make Norvin known.
Aliandro's face had once been long and pointed, but with the loss of teeth and the other mysterious shrinkages of time it had shortened until in repose the chin and the nose seemed to meet like the points of calipers. When he moved his jaws his whole countenance lengthened magically, as if made of some substance more elastic than flesh. It stretched and shortened rapidly now, in the most extraordinary fashion, for the Count had a knack of pleasing people.
"And where are the ladies?" Savigno inquired.