skirting the garden wall. Where it ended, the vineyard began. Between
tall poles, from which purple clusters hung, Olivo led his guest to the
summit. With a complacent air of ownership, he waved towards the house,
lying at the foot of the hill. Casanova fancied he could detect a female
figure flitting to and fro in the turret chamber.

The sun was near to setting, but the heat was still considerable. Beads
of perspiration coursed down Olivo's cheeks, but Casanova's brow showed
no trace of moisture. Strolling down the farther slope, they reached an
olive grove. From tree to tree vines were trained trellis-wise, while
between the rows of olive trees golden ears of corn swayed in the
breeze.

"In a thousand ways," said Casanova appreciatively, "the sun brings
increase."

With even greater wealth of detail than before, Olivo recounted how he
had acquired this fine estate, and how two great vintage years and two
good harvests had made him a well-to-do, in fact a wealthy, man.

Casanova pursued the train of his own thoughts, attending to Olivo's
narrative only in so far as was requisite to enable him from time to
time to interpose a polite question or to make an appropriate comment.
Nothing claimed his interest until Olivo, after talking of all and
sundry, came back to the topic of his family, and at length to
Marcolina. But Casanova learned little that was new. She had lost her
mother early. Her father, Olivo's half-brother, had been a physician in
Bologna. Marcolina, while still a child, had astonished everyone by her
precocious intelligence; but the marvel was soon staled by custom. A few
years later, her father died. Since then she had been an inmate in the