Trivia | Page 8

a something in the
special flavour of that moment that was like the consciousness of

Salvation, or the smell of ripe peaches on a sunny wall.
I know what you're going to call me, Reader. But I am not to be bullied
and abashed by words. And after all, why not let oneself be dazzled and
enchanted? Are not Illusions pleasant, and is this a world in which
Romance hangs on every tree?
And how about your own life? Is that, then, so full of golden visions?

Companions
Dearest, prettiest, and sweetest of my retinue, who gather with delicate
industry bits of silk and down from the bleak world to make the soft
nest of my fatuous repose; who ever whisper honied words in my ear,
or trip before me holding up deceiving mirrors--is it Hope, or is it not
rather Vanity, that I love the best?

Edification
"I must really improve my Mind," I tell myself, and once more begin to
patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and toil on at the vain
task of edification, though the wind tears off the tiles, the floors give
way, the ceilings fall, strange birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and
owls hoot and laugh in the tumbling chimneys.

The Rose
The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her garden,
and was fond of telling how it had grown from a cutting she had
brought years before from Italy, when she was first married. She and
her husband had been travelling back in their carriage from Rome (it
was before the time of railways), and on a bad piece of road south of
Siena they had broken down, and had been forced to pass the night in a
little house by the roadside. The accommodation was wretched of
course; she had spent a sleepless night, and rising early had stood,
wrapped up, at her window, with the cool air blowing on her face, to
watch the dawn. She could still, after all these years, remember the blue
mountains with the bright moon above them, and how a far-off town on
one of the peaks had gradually grown whiter and whiter, till the moon
faded, the mountains were touched with the pink of the rising sun, and
suddenly the town was lit as by an illumination, one window after

another catching and reflecting the sun's beams, till at last the whole
little city twinkled and sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars.
That morning, finding they would have to wait while their carriage was
being repaired, they had driven in a local conveyance up to the city on
the mountain, where they had been told they would find better quarters;
and there they had stayed two or three days. It was one of the miniature
Italian cities with a high church, a pretentious piazza, a few narrow
streets and little palaces, perched all compact and complete, on the top
of a mountain, within an enclosure of walls hardly larger than an
English kitchen garden. But it was full of life and noise, echoing all day
and all night with the sounds of feet and voices.
The Café of the simple inn where they stayed was the meeting-place of
the notabilities of the little city; the _Sindaco_, the _avvocato_, the
doctor, and a few others; and among them they noticed a beautiful, slim,
talkative old man, with bright black eyes and snow-white hair--tail and
straight and still with the figure of a youth, although the waiter told
them with pride that the Conte was _molto vecchio_--would in fact be
eighty in the following year. He was the last of his family, the waiter
added--they had once been great and rich people--but he had no
descendants; in fact the waiter mentioned with complacency, as if it
were a story on which the locality prided itself, that the Conte had been
unfortunate in love, and had never married.
The old gentleman, however, seemed cheerful enough; and it was plain
that he took an interest in the strangers, and wished to make their
acquaintance. This was soon effected by the friendly waiter; and after a
little talk the old man invited them to visit his villa and garden which
were just outside the walls of the town. So the next afternoon, when the
sun began to descend, and they saw in glimpses through doorways and
windows blue shadows beginning to spread over the brown mountains,
they went to pay their visit. It was not much of a place, a small,
modernized stucco villa, with a hot pebbly garden, and in it a stone
basin with torpid gold fish, and a statue of Diana and her hounds
against the wall. But what gave a glory