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Updated: April 30, 2025
The friendship begun at Prato must have been continued in Florence, for in 1480 Paolo not only owned that house at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini, but was the proud possessor of a podere at Brozzi, which yielded six barrels of wine.
What a tranquil, contented life it seemed, with romantic beauty as a part of its daily texture! the sunny terrace, with its tangled <i>podere</i> beneath it; the bright grey olives against the bright blue sky; the long, serene, horizontal lines of other villas, flanked by their upward cypresses, disposed upon the neighbouring hills; the richest little city in the world in a softly-scooped hollow at one's feet, and beyond it the most appealing of views, the most majestic, yet the most familiar.
Her account of the mystery didn't suffice: her recall of her birth in Florence and Florentine childhood; her parents, from the great country, but themselves already of a corrupt generation, demoralised, falsified, polyglot well before her, with the Tuscan balia who was her first remembrance; the servants of the villa, the dear contadini of the poder, the little girls and the other peasants of the next podere, all the rather shabby but still ever so pretty human furniture of her early time, including the good sisters of the poor convent of the Tuscan hills, the convent shabbier than almost anything else, but prettier too, in which she had been kept at school till the subsequent phase, the phase of the much grander institution in Paris at which Maggie was to arrive, terribly frightened, and as a smaller girl, three years before her own ending of her period of five.
It did not strike the earth, but it afforded us a magnificent spectacle during our stay in Montauto, and the next year it was followed by war between Austria and France and the evacuation of Venice. The elevation of Bellosguardo sloped from the villa north and east, and this declivity was occupied by a podere of some dozen acres, on which grew grape-vines, olive and fig trees.
How well Boccaccio describes the place: "On the top of a hill there stood a palace which was surrounded by beautiful gardens, delightful meadows, and cool springs, and in the midst was a great and beautiful court with galleries, halls, and rooms which were adorned with paintings...." Not far away, Boccaccio himself lived on the podere of his father.
Who would not rather lie with me in the podere in the shade of the cypress trees, under the blue, blue sky, and behold through a tangle of olive-boughs the marvellous Dome of Florence, as satisfying as the sea, or under a starry heaven the loveliest of cities glittering like a rival firmament with answering constellations? And yet I recant.
Ascending by the steep pathway that leads upward from the broad high road, it is not long before we reach the old podere, amidst whose olive groves and vineyards the poet was wont to sit dreamily gazing at the glorious view before him.
The hour, the atmosphere, the place, the twinkling taper, the sentiment of the observer, the thought that some one had been rescued here from an assassin or from some other peril and had set up a little grateful altar in consequence, against the yellow-plastered wall of a tangled <i>podere</i>; all this led me to approach the shrine with a reverent, an emotional step.
Thus I went through the long hours, and at last evening came a beautiful warm May evening, and long before the appointed hour I was at our rendezvous in a deserted podere on the mountain-side, overgrown with flags and other spring flowers, among which the fireflies were flitting noiselessly. I had no eyes for the beauty of the scene, however.
The vintage has been going on in our podere for about a week, and I saw a part of the process of making wine, under one of our back windows. It was on a very small scale, the grapes being thrown into a barrel, and crushed with a sort of pestle; and as each estate seems to make its own wine, there are probably no very extensive and elaborate appliances in general use for the manufacture.
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