The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cardinal's Snuff-Box, by Henry Harland

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Title: The Cardinal's Snuff-Box

Author: Henry Harland

Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5610]
Posting Date: March 25, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX

By Henry Harland

I

"The Signorino will take coffee?" old Marietta asked, as she set the
fruit before him.

Peter deliberated for a moment; then burned his ships.

"Yes," he answered.

"But in the garden, perhaps?" the little brown old woman suggested, with
a persuasive flourish.

"No," he corrected her, gently smiling, and shaking his head, "not
perhaps--certainly."

Her small, sharp old black Italian eyes twinkled, responsive.

"The Signorino will find a rustic table, under the big willow-tree, at
the water's edge," she informed him, with a good deal of gesture. "Shall
I serve it there?"

"Where you will. I leave myself entirely in your hands," he said.

So he sat by the rustic table, on a rustic bench, under the willow,
sipped his coffee, smoked his cigarette, and gazed in contemplation at
the view.

Of its kind, it was rather a striking view.

In the immediate foreground--at his feet, indeed--there was the river,
the narrow Aco, peacock-green, a dark file of poplars on either bank,
rushing pell-mell away from the quiet waters of the lake. Then, just
across the river, at his left, stretched the smooth lawns of the park of
Ventirose, with glimpses of the many-pinnacled castle through the trees;
and, beyond, undulating country, flourishing, friendly, a perspective of
vineyards, cornfields, groves, and gardens, pointed by numberless white
villas. At his right loomed the gaunt mass of the Gnisi, with its black
forests, its bare crags, its foaming ascade, and the crenelated range of
the Cornobastone; and finally, climax and cynosure, at the valley's
end, Monte Sfiorito, its three snow-covered summits almost
insubstantial-seeming, floating forms of luminous pink vapour, in the
evening sunshine, against the intense blue of the sky.

A familiar v