Have you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house,
that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest
behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the
activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life
flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the
villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall
windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there
may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the
arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the
disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors....


II

From the loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue
barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated
vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes
and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted
the balustrade as with fine _laminae_ of gold, vineyards stooped to
the rich valley clasped in hills. The lower slopes were strewn with white
villages like stars spangling a summer dusk; and beyond these, fold on
fold of blue mountain, clear as gauze against the sky. The August air was
lifeless, but it seemed light and vivifying after the atmosphere of the
shrouded rooms through which I had been led. Their chill was on me and I
hugged the sunshine.

"The Duchess's apartments are beyond," said the old man.