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An artist even now will select its old-world quiet, leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and Sant' Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant' Elisabetta offers.
As the hag Tofana was the inventor of a new and deadly poison, so Lucius Aurelius Verus was the inventor of a new species of luxury. He had a most magnificent couch made, on which four raised cushions closed in on all sides by a very thin net, and made of leaves of roses.
It is hard to imagine a carriage climbing a road any steeper than that one on the slopes of Monte Tofana! One can not aptly describe a view like that! It is all a picture; as if every part was purposely what it is, here rocky, here green, here snowy, with summits, valleys, ravines and villages and even a partly ruined castle to form a whole such as an artist or poet would revel in.
Monte Tofana, just beyond the frontier on the Austrian side, had been held by the Italians for a considerable period, and with it a small section of the surrounding country, less than five miles in depth.
Or you can go south to Belluno and thence to northern Italy. Or a third way and perhaps the finest tour of all is that over a series of magnificent mountain passes to Botzen. This last crosses the Ampezzo Valley and then begins the ascent of Monte Tofana, which here is beautifully wooded. Steepness seems characteristic of this region!
In the fifteenth century it was Venetian territory; but in 1516, under Maximilian I., it was joined to Austria; and it is now one of the richest and most prosperous communes of the Tyrol. It embraces about thirty-five hundred people, scattered in hamlets and clusters of houses through the green basin with its four entrances, lying between the peaks of Tofana, Cristallo, Sorapis, and Nuvolau.
The terrible drops of the aqua tofana glittered like dew on the glowing flowers, taking away in a moment all their fragrance, while leaving all their beauty unimpaired.
Hot rooms and cold draughts are dangerous, but not so fatal as the Aqua Tofana, and other pleasant beverages more revolting and rapid in their effects. Could any thing be more harrowing to a well regulated mind than to see, in the midst of a neatly-turned compliment, one's partner literally look black at one, and expire incontinently in great torments?
Exili, to escape the vengeance of Beatrice Spara, to whom he had proved a faithless lover, fled from Naples, and brought his deadly knowledge to Paris, where he soon found congenial spirits to work with him in preparing the deadly poudre de succession, and the colorless drops of the aqua tofana.
This graveyard, with its ruinous walls, its mangy riot of unwholesome weeds, its corpses festering in slime beneath neglected slabs in hollow chambers, and the mephitic wash of poisoned waters that surround it, inspires the horror of disgust. The morning has not lost its freshness. Antelao and Tofana, guarding the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of snow upon their amethyst.
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