the house in flowers. Moreover I formed this graceful project that
by flowers I would make my way--I would succeed by big nosegays.
I would batter the old women with lilies--I would bombard their
citadel with roses. Their door would have to yield to the pressure
when a mountain of carnations should be piled up against it.
The place in truth had been brutally neglected. The Venetian capacity
for dawdling is of the largest, and for a good many days unlimited
litter was all my gardener had to show for his ministrations.
There was a great digging of holes and carting about of earth,
and after a while I grew so impatient that I had thoughts of
sending for my bouquets to the nearest stand. But I reflected
that the ladies would see through the chinks of their shutters
that they must have been bought and might make up their minds
from this that I was a humbug. So I composed myself and finally,
though the delay was long, perceived some appearances of bloom.
This encouraged me, and I waited serenely enough till they multiplied.
Meanwhile the real summer days arrived and began to pass, and as I
look back upon them they seem to me almost the happiest of my life.
I took more and more care to be in the garden whenever it was not too hot.
I had an arbor arranged and a low table and an armchair put into it;
and I carried out books and portfolios (I had always some business
of writing in hand), and worked and waited and mused and hoped,
while the golden hours elapsed and the plants drank in the light
and the inscrutable old palace turned pale and then, as the day waned,
began to flush in it and my papers rustled in the wandering breeze
of the Adriatic.

Considering how little satisfaction I got from it at first it
is remarkable that I should not have grown more tired of wondering
what mystic rites of ennui the Misses Bordereau celebrated in their