rfect confidence. She even confessed that she had never
had confidence in any other Madonna, having never obtained anything from
any other, though she had prayed to several of high repute, Madonnas of
marble and even of silver. And so her heart was full of ardent devotion
for the holy image which refused her nothing. And she declared in all
simplicity, as though the matter were quite natural and above discussion,
that the few drops of oil which she applied, morning and evening, to
Dario's wound, were alone working his cure, so speedy a cure as to be
quite miraculous. Pierre, fairly aghast, distressed indeed to find such
childish, superstitious notions in one so full of sense and grace and
passion, did not even venture to smile.

In the evenings, when he came back from his strolls and spent an hour or
so in Dario's room, he would for a time divert the patient by relating
what he had done and seen and thought of during the day. And when he
again ventured to stray beyond the district, and became enamoured of the
lovely gardens of Rome, which he visited as soon as they opened in the
morning in order that he might be virtually alone, he delighted the young
prince and Benedetta with his enthusiasm, his rapturous passion for the
splendid trees, the plashing water, and the spreading terraces whence the
views were so sublime. It was not the most extensive of these gardens
which the more deeply impressed his heart. In the grounds of the Villa
Borghese, the little Roman Bois de Boulogne, there were certainly some
majestic clumps of greenery, some regal avenues where carriages took a
turn in the afternoon before the obligatory drive to the Pincio; but
Pierre was more touched by the reserved garden of the villa--that villa
dazzling with marble and now containing one of the finest museums in the
world. There was a simple lawn of fine grass with a vast central basin
surmounted by a figure of Venus, nude and white; and antique fragments,
vases, statues, columns, and _sarcophagi_ were ranged symmetrically all
around the deserted, sunlit yet melancholy, sward. On returning on one
occasion to the Pincio Pierre spent a delightful morning there,
penetrated by the charm of this little nook with its scanty evergreens,
and its admirable vista of all Rome and St. Peter's rising up afar off in
the soft limpid radiance. At the Villa Albani and the Villa Pamphili he
again came upon superb parasol pines, tall, stately, and graceful, and
powerful elm