looks down over a slope of silvery olives to the sea.
Vineyard and orange grove, white town, blue bay, and amber sands lie
mapped out beneath our feet. Not a felucca "to Spezzia bound from Cape
Circella" can sail past without our observation.

"Not a sun can die, nor yet be born, unseen
By dwellers at my villa."

Nay, from this very window, one might almost pitch an orange into the
empty vettura standing in the courtyard of the Croce di Malta!

Then we have a garden--a wild, uncultured place, where figs and lemons,
olives "blackening sullen ripe," and prickly aloes flourish in rank
profusion, side by side; and a loggia, where we sit at twilight drinking
our Chianti wine and listening to the nightingales; and a study looking
out on the bay through a trellis of vine-leaves, where we read and write
together, surrounded by our books. Here, also, just opposite my desk,
hangs Mueller's copy of that portrait of the Marquise de Sainte Aulaire,
which I once gave to Hortense, and which is now my own again. How often
I pause upon the unturned page, how often lay my pen aside, to look from
the painting to the dear, living face beneath it! For there she sits,
day after day, my wife! my poet! with the side-light falling on her
hair, and the warm sea-breezes stirring the soft folds of her dress.
Sometimes she lifts her eyes, those wondrous eyes, luminous from within
"with the light of the rising soul"--and then we talk awhile of our
work, or of our love, believing ever that

"Our work shall still be better for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work."

Perhaps the original of that same painting in the study may yet be ours
some day, with the old chateau in which it hangs, and all the broad
lands belonging thereunto. Our claim has been put forward some time now,
and our lawyers are confident of success. Shall we be happier, if that
success is ours? Can rank add one grace, or wealth one pleasure, to a
life which is already so perfect? I think not, and there are moments
when I almost wish that we may never have it in our power to test
the question.

But stay! the hours fly past. The sun is low, and the tender Italian
twilight will soon close in. Then, when the moon rises, we shall sail
out upon the bay in our own tiny felucca; or perhaps go down through the
town to that white villa gleaming out above the dark tops of yonder
cypresses, and spend some pleasant hours with Dalrymple and his wife.
They,