from the street.

I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with
sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of the
chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a
little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and
dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall of great
hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an
approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I
could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already
gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill,
sunlit and green with leaves.

I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an atmosphere
of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. But perhaps it was
not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was
thinking of me in another country; or perhaps some thought of my own had
come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which
sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their
features; as though a god, travelling by our green highways, should but
ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go again for
ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings? Who shall
say? But we go the lighter about our business, and feel peace and
pleasure in our hearts.

I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation of a
young man, a Catholic, who had married a Protestant girl and gone over to
the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they could understand and
respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman,
who told me that same day there was no difference between the two sects,