“Yes, so it seems,” groaned the painter, and went.
In the garden he found Don Ippolito and Florida, at the fountain where he had himself parted with her the evening before; and he observed with a guilty relief that Don Ippolito was talking to her in the happy unconsciousness habitual with him.
Florida cast at the painter a swift glance of latent appeal and intelligence, which he refused, and in the same instant she met him with another look, as if she now saw him for the first time, and gave him her hand in greeting. It was a beautiful hand; he could not help worshipping its lovely forms, and the lily whiteness and softness of the back, the rose of the palm and finger-tips.
She idly resumed the great Venetian fan which hung from her waist by a chain. “Don Ippolito has been talking about the villeggiatura on the Brenta in the old days,” she explained.
“Oh, yes,” said the painter, “they used to have merry times in the villas then, and it was worth while being a priest, or at least an abbate di casa. I should think you would sigh for a return of those good old days, Don Ippolito. Just imagine, if you were abbate di casa with some patrician family about the close of the last century, you might be the instructor, companion, and spiritual adviser of Illustrissima at the theatres, card-parties, and masquerades, all winter; and at this season, instead of going up the Brenta for a day’s pleasure with us barbarous Yankees, you might be setting out with Illustrissima and all the ‘Strissimi and ‘Strissime, big and little, for a spring villeggiatura there. You would be going in a gilded barge, with songs and fiddles and dancing, instead of a common gondola, and you would stay a month, walking, going to parties and caffès, drinking chocolate and lemonade, gaming, sonneteering, and butterflying about generally.”
“It was doubtless a beautiful life,” answered the priest, with simple indifference. “But I never have thought of it with regret, because I have been preoccupied with other ideas than those of social pleasures, though perhaps they were no wiser.”
Florida had watched Don Ippolito’s face while Ferris was speaking, and she now asked gravely, “But don’t you think their life nowadays is more becoming to the clergy?”
“Why, madamigella? What harm was there in those gayeties? I suppose the bad features of the old life are exaggerated to us.”
“They couldn’t have been worse than the amusements of the hard-drinking, hard-riding, hard-swearing, fox-hunting English parsons about the same time,” said Ferris. “Besides, the abbate di casa had a charm of his own, the charm of all rococo things, which, whatever you may say of them, are somehow elegant and refined, or at least refer to elegance and refinement. I don’t say they’re ennobling, but they’re fascinating. I don’t respect them, but I love them. When I think about the past of Venice, I don’t care so much to see any of the heroically historical things; but I should like immensely to have looked in at the Ridotto, when the place was at its gayest with wigs and masks, hoops and small-clothes, fans and rapiers, bows and courtesies, whispers and glances. I dare say I should have found Don Ippolito there in some becoming disguise.”
Florida looked from the painter to the priest and back to the painter, as Ferris spoke, and then she turned a little anxiously toward the terrace, and a shadow slipped from her face as her mother came rustling down the steps, catching at her drapery and shaking it into place. The young girl hurried to meet her, lifted her arms for what promised an embrace, and with firm hands set the elder lady’s bonnet straight with her forehead.