It was by one of those accidents which are the best fortunes of travel
that I visited the Villa Papa Giulio, when I thought I was merely going
to the Piazza del Popolo, to which one cannot go too often. A chance
look at my guide-book beguiled me with the notion that the villa was
just outside the gate; but it was a deceit which I should be glad to
have practised on me every February 17th of my life. If the villa was
farther off than I thought, the way to it lay for a while through a
tramwayed suburban street delightfully encumbered with wide-horned oxen
drawing heavy wagon-loads of grain, donkeys pulling carts laden with
vegetables, and children and hens and dogs playing their several parts
in a perspective through which one would like to continue indefinitely.
But after awhile a dim, cool, curving lane leaves this street and
irresistibly invites your cab to follow it; and sooner than you could
ask you get to the villa gate. There a gatekeeper tacitly wonders at
your arriving before he is well awake, and will keep you a good five
minutes while he parleys with another custodian before he can bring
himself to sell you a ticket and let you into the beautiful, old,
orange-gray cloistered court, where there is a young architect with the
T-square of his calling sketching some point of it, and a gardener
gently hacking off from the parent stems such palm-leaves as have
survived their usefulness.
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