o invited, with its
tables of moss-painted marble. There would have been an academic poet,
or more than one, in the company, and they would have furnished forth
the prospect with phrases far finer than any I have about me, who can
only say that the Cam-pagna, clothed in mist and cloud-shadowed, swam
round the upland in the colors of a tropic sea.

[Illustration: 40 IN THE GARDENS OF THE VILLA FALCONIERI]

Our mild boy waited a decent moment, as if to let me do better, and then
led down to the casino, round through a wooded valley where there were
some men with fowling-pieces, whom I objected to in tones, if not in
terms. "What are they shooting?" "They are shooting larks, signore."
"What a pity!" "But the larks are leaving Italy, now, and going north."
It was a reason, like many another that humanity is put to it in giving,
and I do not know that I missed any larks, later, from an English meadow
where I saw them spiring up in song, and glad as if none of their
friends had been shot at the Villa Falconieri. In fact, I did not see
those fowlers actually killing any; and I can still hope they were not
very good shots.

The workmen who were putting the place in repair were lunching near the
casino, in a litter of lumber and other structural material, but the
casino itself seemed as yet unprofaned by their touch. At any rate, we
had it quite to ourselves, let wander at will through its cool, bare,
still spaces. If there was a great deal to see, there was not much to
remember, or to remember so much as the satirical frescos of Pier Leone
Ghezzi, who has caricatured himself as well as others in them. They are
not bitter satires, but, on the contrary, very charming; and still more
charming are the family portraits frescoed round the principal room.
Under one curve of the vaulted ceiling the whole family of a given time
is shown, half-length but life-size, looking down pleasantly on the
unexpected American guests who try to pretend they were invited, or at
least came by mistaking the house for another. Better even than this
most amiable circle, or half-circle, of father, mother, and daughter are
the figures of friends or acquaintances or kinsfolk: figures not only
life-size, but full-length, in panels of the walls, in the very act of
stepping on the floor and coming forward to greet their host and hostess
from the other walls. They did not visibly move during our stay, but I
know they only waited for us to go; and that at nigh