walled around with masonry.  From the walls the vineyards & olive
    orchards of the estate slant away toward the valley.  There are
    several tall trees, stately stone-pines, also fig-trees & trees of
    breeds not familiar to me.  Roses overflow the retaining-walls, &
    the battered & mossy stone urn on the gate-posts, in pink & yellow
    cataracts exactly as they do on the drop-curtains in the theaters. 
    The house is a very fortress for strength.  The main walls—­all
    brick covered with plaster—­are about 3 feet thick.  I have several
    times tried to count the rooms of the house, but the irregularities
    baffle me.  There seem to be 28.  There are plenty of windows &
    worlds of sunlight.  The floors are sleek & shiny & full of
    reflections, for each is a mirror in its way, softly imaging all
    objects after the subdued fashion of forest lakes.  The curious
    feature of the house is the salon.  This is a spacious & lofty
    vacuum which occupies the center of the house.  All the rest of the
    house is built around it; it extends up through both stories & its
    roof projects some feet above the rest of the building.  The sense
    of its vastness strikes you the moment you step into it & cast your
    eyes around it & aloft.  There are divans distributed along its
    walls.  They make little or no show, though their aggregate length
    is 57 feet.  A piano in it is a lost object.  We have tried to
    reduce the sense of desert space & emptiness with tables & things,
    but they have a defeated look, & do not do any good.  Whatever
    stands or moves under that soaring painted vault is belittled.

He describes the interior of this vast room (they grew to love it), dwelling upon the plaster-relief portraits above its six doors, Florentine senators and judges, ancient dwellers there and former owners of the estate.

The date of one of them is 1305—­middle-aged, then, & a judge—­he could have known, as a youth, the very greatest Italian artists, & he could have walked & talked with Dante, & probably did.  The date of another is 1343—­he could have known Boccaccio & spent his afternoons wandering in Fiesole, gazing down on plague-reeking Florence & listening to that man’s improper tales, & he probably did.  The date of another is 1463—­he could have met Columbus & he knew the magnificent Lorenzo, of course.  These are all Cerretanis —­or Cerretani-Twains, as I may say, for I have adopted myself into their family on account of its antiquity—­my origin having been heretofore too recent to suit me.

We are considering the details of Viviani at some length, for it was in this setting that he began and largely completed what was to be his most important work of this later time—­in some respects his most important of any time—­the ‘Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc’.  If the reader loves this book, and he must love it if he has read it, he will not begrudge the space here given to the scene of its inspiration.  The outdoor picture of Viviani is of even more importance, for he wrote oftener out-of-doors than elsewhere.  Clemens added it to his notes several months later, but it belongs here.