The retreat of Irene’s lover was one well fitted to feed his melancholy reveries.  Without being absolutely a fortress, it was sufficiently strong to resist any assault of the mountain robbers or petty tyrants in the vicinity; while, built by some former lord from the materials of the half-ruined villas of the ancient Romans, its marbled columns and tesselated pavements relieved with a wild grace the grey stone walls and massive towers of feudal masonry.  Rising from a green eminence gently sloping to the lake, the stately pile cast its shadow far and dark over the beautiful waters; by its side, from the high and wooded mountains on the background, broke a waterfall, in irregular and sinuous course—­now hid by the foliage, now gleaming in the light, and collecting itself at last in a broad basin—­beside which a little fountain, inscribed with half-obliterated letters, attested the departed elegance of the classic age—­some memento of lord and poet whose very names were lost; thence descending through mosses and lichen, and odorous herbs, a brief, sheeted stream bore its surplus into the lake.  And there, amidst the sturdier and bolder foliage of the North, grew, wild and picturesque, many a tree transplanted, in ages back, from the sunnier East; not blighted nor stunted in that golden clime, which fosters almost every produce of nature as with a mother’s care.  The place was remote and solitary.  The roads that conducted to it from the distant towns were tangled, intricate, mountainous, and beset by robbers.  A few cottages, and a small convent, a quarter of a league up the verdant margin, were the nearest habitations; and, save by some occasional pilgrim or some bewildered traveller, the loneliness of the mansion was rarely invaded.  It was precisely the spot which proffered rest to a man weary of the world, and indulged the memories which grow in rank luxuriance over the wrecks of passion.  And he whose mind, at once gentle and self-dependent, can endure solitude, might have ransacked all earth for a more fair and undisturbed retreat.

But not to such a solitude had the earlier dreams of Adrian dedicated the place.  Here had he thought—­should one bright being have presided—­here should love have found its haven:  and hither, when love at length admitted of intrusion, hither might wealth and congenial culture have invited all the gentler and better spirits which had begun to move over the troubled face of Italy, promising a second and younger empire of poesy, and lore, and art.  To the graceful and romantic but somewhat pensive and inert, temperament of the young noble, more adapted to calm and civilized than stormy and barbarous times, ambition proffered no reward so grateful as lettered leisure and intellectual repose.  His youth coloured by the influence of Petrarch, his manhood had dreamed of a happier Vaucluse not untenanted by a Laura.  The visions which had connected the scene with the image of Irene made the place still haunted by her shade; and time and absence only ministering to his impassioned meditations, deepened his melancholy and increased his love.