ss of learned lore would he not store
up! What strange and curious knowledge would he not acquire in this
calm seclusion! He parcelled out his day in imagination; and, by rising
early, and by habits of uninterrupted study, he contemplated that in one
long vacation here he would have amassed an amount of information that
no discursive labour could ever attain. And then, to distract him from
weightier cares, he would write those light and sketchy things, some
of which had already found favour with editors. He had already attained
some small literary successes, and was like a very young man, delighted
with the sort of recognition they had procured him; and last of all,
there was something of romance in this life of mysterious seclusion.
He was the hero of a little story to himself, and this thought diffused
itself over every spot and every occupation, as is only known to those
who like to make poems of their lives, and be to their own hearts their
own epic.

Calvert, too, liked the place; but scarcely with the same enthusiasm.
The fishing was excellent. He had taken a "four-pounder," and heard of
some double the size. The cookery of the little inn was astonishingly
good. Onofrio had once been a courier, and picked up some knowledge of
the social chemistry on his travels. Beccafichi abounded, and the small
wine of the Podere had a false smack of Rhenish, and then with cream,
and fresh eggs, and fresh butter, and delicious figs in profusion, there
were, as he phrased it, "far worse places in the hill country!"

Resides being the proprietor of the inn, Onofrio owned a little villa, a
small cottage-like thing on the opposite shore of the lake, to which he
made visits once or twice a week, with a trout, or a capon, or a basket
of artichokes, or some fine peaches--luxuries which apparently always
found ready purchasers amongst his tenants. He called them English, but
his young guests, with true British phlegm, asked him no questions about
them, and he rarely, if ever, alluded to them. Indeed, his experience
of English people had enabled him to see that they ever maintained a
dignified reserve towards each other, even when offering to foreigners
all the freedom of an old intimacy; and then he had an Italian's tact
not to touch on a dangerous theme, and thus he contented himself with
the despatch of his occasional hamper without attracting more attention
to the matter than the laborious process of inscribing the words
"Illustriss