O

VI

AT THE SPRING

Na summer afternoon the bark of
Memory was freighted with a gay

company intent on visiting the gush

ing source of the spring rendered. celebrated by Pliny the Younger, and which still flows and ebbs through all the years. The light craft carried beauty, fashion, art, and learning over the lake, with laughter, jest, and song to the gates of the Villa Pliniana, the gloomy palace at Palanzo at the base of the cliff. Here Pliny invoked Sylvanus, reposed on the grass beside the fountain, and listened to the birds. He judged that a portion of ground not over large, a spring, and a little woodland sufficed for the wants of man.

The party was not composed of such elements as the Arcadians of the seventeenth century of

Rome, who repaired to the hills to read sonnets, elegies, canzonets, and epigrams. They had no guide, Ciampoli, Crescimbeni, or Metastasis, adopted by Gravina among the guests, yet each prepared to enjoy the hour in a characteristic fashion. They sought the rocky portal of the spring, and the practical element unpacked the hampers on a convenient space of green sward. The tragedienne cast aside the fatigues of a professional career in all European capitals with her straw hat on the ground, and pushed back the coronet of heavy, black, braided hair from a fine brow. Beauty, very tiny and piquante, essayed on tiptoe to drag down some sprays of ivy from a wall.

"The most precious perfumes are ever kept in the smallest vases," said the French composer, gallantly assisting in the task.

"Pour libations to Ceres that the wheat may grow for all this countryside!" exclaimed the poet of the hour with mock fervour. "Bring wine, roses, nard, and meats for the sacrifice to this shrine of Pliny's meditations."

He was

esteemed himself an amiable pagan, who believed in Pales, Venus, and still more firmly in the Muses.

The historian, tall, slender, with the severe features and silvered locks of a sage, was the chosen host of the occasion. His creed in an illustrious career was that truth was the polar star of his navigation.

"What shall the meats of sacrifice be, my friend?" he demanded, smiling.

"The picnic is ancient," said the American. "In the time of Tertullian each of us would have brought his own plate."

"As to food, Achilles received Priam with lamb, and bread served in baskets," suggested the Tragedienne, helping herself to fruit.

"Homer praised flour mingled with cheese and honey as the most delicate portion of heroes," added the English geologist.

"A fig for Homer!" railed the poet. "I scorn, to-day, even Pliny's thrushes, served with wild asparagus cut under the vines. Give me nothing less than the brains of the six ostriches

on a silver dish demanded by Heliogabalus. Well! If needs must-" and he removed a ham-sandwich, with finger and thumb, from a pyramid heaped on a napkin.

The lady of rank nibbled a galette, while the sunshine sparkled on the jewels in her ears and on her hands.

"For whom do you weave a garland?" she inquired of Beauty.

The latter had gathered her harvest of ivy sprays in her lap, and sat in the shade of the laurel hedge, a charming figure enveloped in silky draperies and lace.

"I must choose a subject," she replied demurely, surveying her companions through her eyelashes.

"Ah!" sighed the French composer. "Lucullus paid a thousand crowns for the portrait of Glycera seated, and making a flower wreath."

66

My child, it is easier to fashion a garland than to find a head worthy to wear it, according to Goethe," warned the historian.

Whereupon Beauty approached, and dropped

her crown on his silvery locks, amidst the applause of her friends.

The singers, soprano and tenor, paced the path slowly, arm in arm, their voices blending in a subdued and fragmentary cadence. The Swede dislodged a fragment of stone from an archway with his cane. He discussed the possibility of a glacier origin, and how it came there, with the Englishman and American. Truly science has no country, and the trio were brothers on the spot. The Frenchman held a wine-glass of foaming Asti, and demanded of the bevy of ladies, in the language of Charles d'Orléans, the Beranger of the fifteenth century, in what country the beautiful Flora was to be discovered, the discreet Héloïse, the white Queen Blanche, like a lily, who sang with the voice of a siren, or Jeanne, the good Lorrainese burned by the English at Rouen.

66

Sacrilege!" quoth the American, approaching the fount with a cup. Pliny should be pledged in his spring here, at least."

"To the fountain of Bandusium as clear as glass, and the source where Numa sacrificed a