ole.

It was so beautiful, so peaceful; but from the west--and no less from
the south-east!--threatening storm-clouds were rising.

From the entrance a straight path, strewn with white sand, led through
the wide-spreading garden, between tall ilices and yews, which
according to the long ruling fashion had been cut into all kinds of
geometrical figures--a taste, or rather want of taste, which the Rococo
did not invent, but only newly borrowed from the gardens of the
Imperators.

Statues were placed at regular intervals in the space between the
garden gate and the entrance to the dwelling-house: nymphs, a Flora, a
satyr, a Mercury--bad work in plaster; the stout Crispus made them by
the dozen in his workshop on the Vulcan market-place in Juvavum; and he
sold them cheap: for the times were not good for _men_, and were bad
for gods and demi-gods; but these were all gifts, for Crispus was the
father's brother of the young householder.

From the entrance of the garden, echoing from the stone wall of the
enclosure, there sounded several strokes of a hammer, only lightly, for
they were given carefully by an artist-hand; they seemed to be the last
improving, finishing efforts of a master.

Now the hammerer sprang up; he had been kneeling just within the
entrance, near to which, standing upright against each other, were some
dozen yet unworked marble slabs, which pointed out the dwelling of a
stone-mason. He stuck the little hammer into the leather belt which
fastened the skin apron over his blue tunic, shook from a little
oil-flask a few drops on a woollen cloth, rubbed therewith the marble
till it was smooth as a mirror, turned his head aside, as a bird will
that wishes to look closely at anything, and then, nodding well
pleased, read from the slab at the entrance:

"Yes, yes! here dwells happiness; _my_ happiness, _our_ happiness: so
long as my Felicitas dwells here--happy and making happy. May
misfortune never step over this threshold: banished by the adage, may
every bad spirit Halt! Now is the house beautifully finished by this
inscription. But where is she, then? She must see it and praise me.
Felicitas," cried he, turning towards the house, "come then!"

He wiped the sweat from his brow, and stood upright--a supple, youthful
form, slender, not above the middle height, not unlike the Mercury of
the garden, whose proportions Crispus had formed according to old
tradition; dark-brown hair, in short curls, covered almo