c rocks of the Arabione,
was too high up and inconvenient for him. He sold his possessions there,
purchased the olive-grove of Sedorgg above Casarico, and a small villa
on the edge of the lake, in Casarico itself. It was so small as to be
almost a toy villa, and from its shape he called it the "Greek _II_ or
Pi" in imitation of the "Digamma" of Ugo Foscolo. From the Contrada dei
Mal'ari a short passage led to the little courtyard flanked by a tiny
portico, open on the lake-side and surrounded by tall oleanders. It
overlooked six miles of water, green, grey or blue, according to the
hour, as far as Monte S. Salvatore there in the distance, stooping,
under the burden of its melancholy hump, towards the humble hills of
Carona beneath it. On the east of the little house there was a
kitchen-garden, fabulously large for that part of the world, the
dimensions of which Engineer Ribera was wont to define by means of the
following surveyor's description: "Large field called _il Campone_,
measuring seven _tavole_." Now seven _tavole_ correspond to twenty or
twenty-two square metres! The Professor cultivated it with the aid of
his little servant Giuseppe, called Pinella, and of a small collection
of French treatises. He sent to France for the seeds of the most highly
esteemed qualities of vegetables, which sometimes came up in shameless
disregard of their certificates of baptism, and indeed of any honestly
baptised family. It would then happen that philosopher and servant,
stooping over the beds, their hands on their knees, would raise their
eyes from these mocking sprouts, and gaze at each other, the philosopher
honestly disappointed, the servant hypocritically so. In one corner of
the garden, in a little stable constructed according to the most
approved principles, dwelt a small Swiss cow, which had been purchased
after three months of diligent study, and had turned out as delicate and
fleshless as the master himself, who--in spite of the Swiss cow and four
Paduan hens--often found it impossible to make himself a cup of custard
in his own house. In the wall supporting the garden on the lake-side,
against whose base the _breva_ drove the swelling waves, he had made
some openings in which, following Franco Maironi's advice, he had
planted many American aloes, many roses and some caper-bushes, thus
binding together the substantial contents of his kitchen-garden, as he
was wont to say, with poetic elegance of form. And for the love of