There one searches out charming little nooks which
would make the loveliest of pictures. There was one in the Via del
Terz' Ordine which was a sweet bit of color. Two rows of stone houses
facing on other streets turn their backs to this, and shade it to a
soft twilight, till it seems a corridor with a high blue ceiling rather
than a street. There it lies forgotten. No one passes through it or
looks into it. In one spot the tall houses are separated by a rod or so
of high garden-wall with an arch in the middle of it, and under the
arch is a door. Over this arch climbs a rose-vine with dropping
clusters of tiny pink roses that lean on the stone, hang down into the
shadow or lift and melt into the liquid, dazzling blue of the sky.
Except the roses and the sky all is a gray shadow. It reminds one of
some lovely picture of the Madonna with clustering cherub faces about
her head, and you think it would not be discordant with the scene if a
miraculous figure should steal into sight under that arch. It is one of
the charms of Italy that it can always fitly frame whatever picture
your imagination may paint.
One finds a pleasant and cultivated society there too.
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