rious fact that though
their common system worked so smoothly and successfully, they each
maintained for the other the most disparaging opinion, Twist deeming
Trover a light, thoughtless, inconsiderate creature, Trover returning
the compliment by regarding his partner as a bigoted, low-minded, vulgar
sort of fellow, useful behind the desk, but with no range of speculation
or enterprise about him.

Our present scene is laid at Mr. Trover's villa near Florence. It stands
on the sunny slope of Fiezole, and with a lovely landscape of the Val d'
Arno at its feet. O ye gentles, who love to live at ease, to inhale an
air odorous with the jasmine and the orange-flower,--to gaze on scenes
more beautiful than Claude ever painted,--to enjoy days of cloudless
brightness, and nights gorgeous in starry brilliancy, why do ye not all
come and live at Fiezole? Mr. Trover's villa is now to let, though this
announcement is not inserted as an advertisement. There was a rumor
that it was once Boccaccio's villa. Be that as it may, it was a pretty,
coquettish little place, with a long terrace in front, under which ran
an orangery, a sweet, cool, shady retreat in the hot noon-time, with a
gushing little fountain always rippling and hissing among rock-work. The
garden sloped away steeply. It was a sort of wilderness of flowers
and fruit-trees, little cared for or tended, but beautiful in the wild
luxuriance of its varied foliage, and almost oppressive in its wealth
of perfume. Looking over this garden, and beyond it again, catching the
distant domes of Florence, the tall tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, and
the massive block of the Pitti, was a small but well-proportioned room
whose frescos were carried from wall to ceiling by a gentle arch of the
building, in which were now seated three gentlemen over their dessert.
Mr. Trover's guests were our acquaintances Stocmar and Ludlow Paten. The
banker and the "Impresario" were very old friends; they had done "no
end of shrewd things" together. Paten was a new acquaintance. Introduced
however by Stocmar, he was at once admitted to all the intimacy of
his host, and they sat there, in the free indulgence of confidence,
discussing people, characters, events, and probabilities, as three such
men, long case-hardened with the world's trials, well versed in its
wiles, may be supposed to do. Beneath the great broad surface of this
life of ours, with its apparent impulses and motives, there is another
stratum of