One could hardly help looking over
one's shoulder to see if they were not following to that farthermost
room called Primavera, which is painted around and aloft like a very
bower of spring, with foliage and flowers covering the walls and
dropping through the trellis feigned overhead. Of all the caprices of
art, which in Italy so loved caprice, I recall no such pleasing
playfulness as in the decoration of these rooms. If you pass through
the last you may look from the spring within on no fairer spring without
bordering the shores of the Campagna sea.
It was so pathetic to imagine the place going out of the right Italian
keeping that I attributed a responsive sadness to the tall, handsome,
elderly woman who had allowed us the freedom of the casino. Her faded
beauty was a little sallow, as the faded beauty of a Roman matron should
be, and her large, dark eyes glowed from purpling shadows.
"And the German Emperor owns it now?"
"Yes, they say he has bought it."
"And the Germans will soon be coming?"
"They say.
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