“So you would see the retreat I claim as my own den?  Let us pass back into the box-alley.  The box does not grow well unless sheltered from the winds and the beating sunshine; so the gaps in the hedge I fill up with rosemary.  You see that the inside of the alley is formed by vines.  The shadowy, tender lawn under them is a pleasant place to walk on barefoot.  The fig and mulberry are the only trees that grow well here.  The garden is backed by two sunny rooms again, and behind that is the kitchen garden.  And here is the long covered way near the public work.  It has twice as many windows opening out as it has opposite opening into my garden, and on blowing as well as windless days the shutters are ever open.  In front is my colonnade, fringed with violets.  Here is my basking-walk.  You see how it shelters one, too, from the African winds.  It cuts off the wind from the other side in winter.  It has advantages both for winter and summer:  according to the season and the shade, you can enjoy the sea-view or can get the cool of the garden and alley.  Then those open windows always keep the air astir.  This summer-like place is my special delight, for I planned it myself.”

And indeed, my pseudo Gallus, let me remark that, being myself a native of the Mediterranean, I can enter better than you can into the childish delight that our friend Caius Plinius expresses.  It is a joy which is not to be found in the nature of the American to sleep in the tropic heats of a July sun.  Winter is abhorrent to the nature of every Levanter.  To bask upon the shore of the Mediterranean, with the calm lazy sea at your feet and the winds cut off from your back, is the only decent way of hibernating.  But this is in your ear as we pass along, and you will have to repress the smile on your lips or change it into a sign of courteous pleasure, or he will detect the impostor.

Now then:  “Here is my sun-chamber.  It looks out on the colonnade, the sea and the sunshine.  It leads into the covered walk by this window, and into my bed-chamber by this door.  But hither.  Seaward there is a letter cabinet on the division wall.  It is entered from the bed-chamber, and can be separated effectually by these curtains and this transparent door.  You see it has only a lounge and a couple of arm-chairs.  At your feet is the sea, behind you the house, over head the woods:  windows look out on either side.  My bed-room is convenient, and yet I am far from the babble of the household.  Not the trampling of the waves, no sounds of storm, no flash of lightning, even daylight cannot penetrate here unless the shutters are opened.  It is so secret and quiet and hidden because it is in the corridor between the bed-room walls and the garden wall, and so every sound is deadened.  A small oven is added to the bed-chamber, which by this narrow opening admits heat when required.  There lie the antechamber and the bed-room, which get the sun all the day long.  What do you think of my den, my Gallus?  When I betake myself to this retreat I seem to have left my home behind me; and especially in the Saturnalia I delight in it.  When the rest of the house is given up to the license of noisy festivals, no noises can disturb my reveries, no clamors interfere with my studies.”