verses[13] we may see the place as he found it when, gliding swiftly on the waves, perhaps on a day like this, he came to those walls of glistening marble, which got their name from the planet that borrows her light from the sun, her brother.  The country itself furnished those stones which shamed with their whiteness the laughing lilies, while their polished surface with its veins threw forth shining rays.  For this is a land rich in marbles which defy, sure of their victory, the virgin whiteness of the snow itself.

Well, there is but little left of that shining city, and yet, as I lay dreaming in the grass-grown theatre, it seemed to be a festal day, and there among the excited and noisy throng of holiday-makers, just for a moment I caught sight of the aediles in their white tunics, and then, far away, the terrified face of a little child, frightened at the hideous masks of the actors.  Then, the performance over, I followed home some simple old centurion was it?—­who, returned from the wars on the far frontier, had given the city a shady walk and that shrine of Neptune.  We came at last to a country house of “pale red and yellow marble,” half farm, half villa, lying away from the white road at the point where it begins to decline somewhat sharply to the marshland below.  It is close to the sea.  Large enough for all requirements, and not expensive to keep in repair, my host explains.  At its entrance is a modest but beautiful hall; then come the cloisters, which are rounded into the likeness of the letter D, and these enclose a small and pretty courtyard.  These cloisters, I am told, are a fine refuge in a storm, for they are protected by windows and deep over-hanging eaves.  Facing the cloisters is a cheerful inner court, then the dining-room towards the seashore, fine enough for anyone, as my host asserts, and when the south-west wind is blowing the room is just scattered by the spray of the spent waves.  On all sides are folding doors, or windows quite as large as doors, so that from two sides and the front you command a prospect of three seas as it were; while at the back, as he shows me, one can see through the inner court to the woods or the distant hills.  Just then the young mistress of the place comes to greet me, bidden by my host her father, and in a moment I see the nobility of this life, full of pure and honourable things, together with a certain simplicity and sweetness.  Seeing my admiration, my host speaks of his daughter, of her love for him, of her delight in his speeches,—­for he is of authority in the city,—­of how on such occasions she will sit screened from the audience by a curtain, drinking in what people say to his credit.  He smiles as he tells me this, adding she has a sharp wit, is wonderfully economical, and loves him well; and indeed she is worthy of him, and doubtless, as he says, of her grandfather.  Then my proud old centurion leads me down the alleys of his garden full of figs and mulberries, with roses and a few violets,