The baron added no more to the story, and as he was busy with his letters during the rest of the evening, Gaston only saw him again to bid him good-bye on the following morning.
A day or two afterwards, Gaston settled himself in the Villa Torcello.[Torcello.] His coming there created a momentary flutter of excitement in the quarter where the villa was situated; but this was not known to Gaston, who had neither friends nor acquaintances in the town.
He wrote to tell his father of his new residence, and to ask him whether he had visited Palermo in the tour he had made in Italy a few years before Gaston’s birth. One morning, the post from England brought him some flattering notices of a book he had published shortly before leaving, which made him think that it was time to set to work upon a new story. But the idea he was seeking did not come to him, and the indolent charm of his surroundings favoured no severe exertion of the intellect.
He walked in the town until it grew familiar to him; its avenues, and terraces by the sea, its deep shadowy gardens, its groves of orange trees and lemon; its narrow streets and the multiplied variety of the houses, with their odd and glaring contrasts of colour; its churches, where the religion of the west seems out of harmony with the architectural and decorative fashions of the east.
Sometimes he hired a carriage and drove out into the country, and these excursions were usually prolonged throughout the day. On one such occasion, he was returning late in the afternoon, and the vetturino was guiding his horses in lazy fashion in and out amongst a straggling file of mule-carts laden with wine, in a narrow lane on the outskirts of the town.
“What place is this?” called out Gaston presently, pointing to an old, discoloured building of considerable extent, which lay on the left of the road.
“Il Convento de’ Cappuccini, signor,” replied the driver, and (never rejecting a chance to rest) pulled up his horses, adding: “The signor no see Il Convento? Ma, è molto curioso, signor (but it’s a queer place).”
Gaston got down from the carriage, and at that moment a sandalled and brown-robed monk appeared at the entrance to the monastery.
“Ecco il padre, signor!” (There’s the father), said the driver, pointing to the Capucin, who bowed to Gaston with a courteous indication of readiness to receive him.
Gaston went across, and was presently following the monk through an outer chamber of the monastery, empty and cold, with bare walls and a dark stone floor.