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So nothing was stinted; the beautiful ballroom attached to the hotel was thrown open, and lavishly decorated with flowers, fountains, and twinkling lights; an awning extended from its windows right down the avenue of dark ilex-trees, which were ornamented with Chinese lanterns; an elegant supper was laid out in the large dining-room, and the whole establishment was en fete.
The gravelled terrace in front of the villa commanded, through the clipped arches of the ilex-trees, the Campagna with its soft, undulating bands of many-colored green, and the distant city of Rome, whose bells were always filling the air between with a tremulous vibration.
Six weeks of unalloyed dinner-parties, composed of certain people I know, would make me begin to wear moreen petticoats and talk about the deplorable condition of London society." She led all her flock out on to the lawn under the ilex-trees after breakfast. "Let us go and encourage industry," she said. "We will watch Emily Fox-Seton working. She is an example."
Girdling the villa stands a grove of ilex-trees, cut so as to embrace its high-built walls with dark continuous green. In the courtyard are lemon-trees and pomegranates laden with fruit. From a terrace on the roof the whole wide view is seen; and here upon a parapet, from which we leaned one autumn afternoon, my friend discovered this graffito: "E vidi e piansi il fato amaro!"
And still the niches and the recesses were there, the huge wall too along the face of the hill; all broken and gashed and ruinous, showing the fine reticulated brickwork that had been once faced with marble; alternately supported and torn by the pushing roots of the ilex-trees. The tunnelled passages too were there, choked and fallen in; no flash of the lake now beyond their cool darkness!
This was held in the spring-time, and the promise of the ascension of a balloon added to the attractions of the lottery. To enter the Villa, you had to purchase a tombola-ticket, whereas, in the Piazza Navona, this was unnecessary. At one end of the amphitheatre of the villa, under the shade of the ilex-trees, a platform was erected, where the numbers were called out and the awards given.
What a refuge for antique reverie was that wood of ilex-trees, so old and so sombre, where the sun in declining cast fiery gleams of red gold amidst the sheeny bronze of the foliage. You ascend by endless steps, and from the crowning belvedere on high you embrace all Rome at a glance as though by opening your arms you could seize it in its entirety.
Her limbs ached and her still-smiling face was pale, as she stood under the beech-tree regarding the final ceremonies of the festal day, to preside over which Lady Maria and her party returned from their seats under the ilex-trees. The National Anthem was sung loudly, and there were three tremendous cheers given for her ladyship.
There are therefore many ghosts wandering about among these Upper and Lower Gardens the misnamed English Garden with its subtropical vegetation magnolias, cork, bamboo: the Italian Garden with its orange-trees; the French Garden with its arbours and trellis and ilex-trees in the style of the old Empire.
And in these gardens of Rome Pierre ever found the same clipped box-shrubs, the same eucalypti with white trunks and pale leaves long like hair, the same ilex-trees squat and dusky, the same giant pines, the same black cypresses, the same marbles whitening amidst tufts of roses, and the same fountains gurgling under mantling ivy.
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