“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, too, are very happy; but their happiness is of an older date than ours, and tends to other ends.  They have bought lands in the neighborhood, which they cultivate; and they have children whom they adore.  To educate these little ones for the wide world lying beyond that blue bay and the far-off mountains, is the one joy, the one care of their lives.  Truly has it been said that

     “A happy family
     Is but an earlier heaven.”

THE END.