med so often that she was
sick of such things, and that each of their vaunted and promised
novelties proved more stale and dull than its precursor. It was
therefore necessary to let her know something of what was proposed; and
no sooner did she understand that Mark was to be the centre round which
the play turned, than she entered into the plot with the greatest zeal.

It is, perhaps, not strange that to such a woman Mark's character and
personality offered a singular novelty and even charm. The thought of
triumphing over this child-like innocence, of contrasting it with the
licence and riot which the play would offer, struck her jaded curiosity
with a sense of delicious freshness, and she took an eager delight in
the arrangement and contrivance of the scenes.

In expansion of the idea suggested by some of the wonderful theatres in
Italy, where the open-air stage extended into real avenues and thickets,
it was decided that the entire play should be represented in the palace
gardens: and that, in fact, the audience should take part in the action
of the drama. This, where the whole household was theatrical, and where
the actors were trained in the Italian comedy, which left so much to the
_improvisatore_--to the individual taste and skill of the actor--was a
scheme not difficult to realise.

The palace garden, which was very large, was disposed in terraces and
hedges; it was planted with numerous thickets and groves, and, wherever
the inequalities of the ground allowed it, with lofty banks of thick
shrubs crowned with young trees, beneath which were arranged statues and
fountains in the Italian manner. The hedges were cut into arcades and
arches, giving free access to the retired lawns and shady nooks; and
these arcades, and the lofty groves and terraces, gave a constant sense
of mystery and expectation to the scene. The ample lawns and open spaces
afforded more than one suitable stage, upon which the most important
scenes of a play might be performed.

Beneath one of the highest and most important banks, which stretched in
a perfectly straight line across the garden, planted thickly with
flowering shrubs and fringed at the top with a long line of young trees,
whose delicate foliage was distinct against the sky, was placed the
largest of the fountains. It was copied from that in the Piazza Santa
Maria in Transtevere in Rome, and was ornamented with great shells,
fish, and Tritons. On either side of the fountain, and le