an Guido, where it clings to the almost vertical mountainside.
For the greater part the road was bordered by olive orchards, but
sometimes there were vineyards, sometimes groves of walnut-trees, clumps
of stone-pines, or fields of yellowing maize, and everywhere there were
oleanders growing wild, and always there was the view.

Castel San Guido is very like a hundred other mediaeval castles, a grim
old fortress, with walls of I forget what prodigious thickness, with
round towers pierced by sinister-looking meutrieres, and crowned by
battlements, with bare stone courts, stone halls, cold and dimly lighted,
and a dismantled stone chapel. But I dare say the descendant of San
Guido (not being made of wood) had his emotions. And the view was
magnificent--Vallanza below, its red roofs burning in the sun, the purple
bay, the olive-mantled hills, with a haze of gold-dust and pearl-dust
brooding over them, and white-walled villages shining in twenty
improbable situations, with their dark cypresses and slender campanili.

They had toiled up slowly, but they came spinning back at a tremendous
pace, down the steep gradients, round the perilous curves, while Franco,
his jaws shut tight, his brows drawn together, gave all his attention to
his horses, Baldo merrily wound his horn, Anthony smoked cigarettes, and
Adrian, for dear life, with his heart in his mouth, held hard to the
seat-rail at his side. I think he pushed a very genuine _ouf_, when,
without accident, they had regained the level ground.

The Villa del Ponte is a long grey rectangular building, as severe in
outward aspect as a barrack or a prison, in a garden that stretches right
away to the sea-wall, a garden full of palms, oranges, tall, feathery
eucalyptus-trees, and lizards, perfectly Italian. But no sooner do you
pass the portal of the house, than you leave Italy, as on a magic-carpet,
and find yourself in the seventh circle of England, amid English
furniture, English books, English periodicals, daily, weekly, monthly,
(the _Pink 'un_ perhaps the most conspicuous), and between walls
embellished by English sporting-pictures and the masks and brushes of
English foxes. "We hunt a good bit, you know," said Franco. "We've a
little box in Northamptonshire, and hunt with the Pytchley. We both have
the button." One was n't in the least surprised when an English voice,
proceeding from the smuggest of smooth-shaven English countenances,
informed my lord that luncheon