e of many another
sweet-smelling plant that there gave scent, themseemed they were among
all the spiceries that ever grew in the Orient. The sides of these
alleys were all in a manner walled about with roses, red and white,
and jessamine, wherefore not only of a morning, but what while the sun
was highest, one might go all about, untouched thereby, neath
odoriferous and delightsome shade. What and how many and how orderly
disposed were the plants that grew in that place, it were tedious to
recount; suffice it that there is none goodly of those which may brook
our air but was there in abundance. Amiddleward the garden (what was
not less, but yet more commendable than aught else there) was a plat
of very fine grass, so green that it seemed well nigh black, enamelled
all with belike a thousand kinds of flowers and closed about with the
greenest and lustiest of orange and citron trees, the which, bearing
at once old fruits and new and flowers, not only afforded the eyes a
pleasant shade, but were no less grateful to the smell. Midmost the
grass-plat was a fountain of the whitest marble, enchased with
wonder-goodly sculptures, and thence,--whether I know not from a
natural or an artificial source,--there sprang, by a figure that stood
on a column in its midst, so great a jet of water and so high towards
the sky, whence not without a delectable sound it fell back into the
wonder-limpid fount, that a mill might have wrought with less; the
which after (I mean the water which overflowed the full basin) issued
forth of the lawn by a hidden way, and coming to light therewithout,
encompassed it all about by very goodly and curiously wroughten
channels. Thence by like channels it ran through well nigh every part
of the pleasance and was gathered again at the last in a place whereby
it had issue from the fair garden and whence it descended, in the
clearest of streams, towards the plain; but, ere it won thither, it
turned two mills with exceeding power and to the no small vantage of
the lord. The sight of this garden and its fair ordinance and the
plants and the fountain, with the rivulets proceeding therefrom, so
pleased the ladies and the three young men that they all of one accord
avouched that, an Paradise might be created upon earth, they could not
avail to conceive what form, other than that of this garden, might be
given it nor what farther beauty might possibly be added thereunto.
However, as they went most gladsomely thereabou