all fashionables all over Italy
and the provinces had so acclaimed and so promptly adopted along with
circular-topped dining-tables. My _triclinium_ still held grandfather's
square-topped table and the three square sofas about it. Uncle's will, in
fact, had stipulated that no furnishings of the villa must be altered
within five years of the date of his death. As I had to adjust my formal
dinners to the old style, I was not only delighted to have Tanno with us
for himself and for his jollity, but also because he just made up the nine
diners demanded by ancient convention.

Agathemer had asked me, as a special favor, to leave the decoration of the
_triclinium_ entirely to him, and I had agreed, when he fairly begged me,
not to enter the _triclinium_ or even pass its door, after my noonday
siesta. When I did enter it with my guests I was dazzled. The sun had just
set and the northwestern sky was all a blaze of golden brightness,
streaked with long pink and rosy streamers of cloud, from which the
evening light, neither glaring nor dim, flooded through the big
northwestern windows. The spacious room was a bower of bloom. Great
armfuls of flowers hid the capitals of the pilasters, others their bases;
garlands--heavy, even corpulent garlands--were looped from pilaster to
pilaster; every vase was filled with flowers, the little vases on the
brackets, the big ones alternating with the statues in the niches, the
huge floor-vases in the corners: the table, the sofas, the floor, all were
strewn with smaller blossoms, tiny flowers or fresh petals of roses. The
garlands for our heads, which were offered us heaped on a tray, were to
the last degree exquisite. I adjusted mine as if in a dream. I was dazed.
I knew that the flowers could not have been supplied by our gardens; I
could not conjecture whence they came.

Agathemer, bowing and grinning, stood in the inner doorway. My eyes
questioned his.

"I have a note here," he said, "which I was enjoined not to hand you until
you had lain down to dinner."

The two second assistant waiter boys took our shoes and we disposed
ourselves on the sofas, Tanno in the place of honor, I rejoicing again
that his presence had solved, acceptably to all the rest, the otherwise
insoluble problem of to whom I should accord that location.

Agathemer handed me the note. At sight of it I recognized the handwriting
of Vedius Caspo. Of course, like my uncle before me, I always invited to
any of my formal