those solemn liveried servants who had usurped his place had always brought a mournful sigh to his lips.
D'Rubiera put aside his family troubles and lunched in peace, reading, at the same time, his papers propped up against the water-bottle. Then, leaning back, he smoked himself into a half sleep, his mind taking a somewhat more comfortable view of life than it had an hour before. Later he went to his club, where not a soul was to be seen but servants. In the evening the band played in Piazza Colonna. He strolled about and found an acquaintance or two. One went home to dine with him, and they sat up talking till dawn, when he sank into a bed as sweet and fresh as any in the country.
"I wonder how it is that the linen does not smell sepulchral, when everything else in the house does," he thought languidly. "It's a bed of roses." And he dropped pleasantly asleep with that impression.
It was, in fact, due to the faithful Michele that he slept with pleasure instead of disgust. That inspired factotum had had the linen airing on the house-top the whole afternoon, had bought a bottle of rose-essence with his own money, the colonel having a fondness for that perfume, and touched pillows and mattresses here and there with it, and, lastly, had made the bed only an hour before his master got into it.
Perhaps it was owing to this pleasant sleep that, instead of returning at once and with authority to Sassovivo, as he had half resolved to do the night before, the duke set out for his villa by the sea.
Bellmar was a noble casino. It stood on a slight elevation fronting the sea and about ten minutes' walk from the beach.
It was another guarda-roba taken by surprise and another stale house to open. But here the fresh sea-air rushed in through open casements, there was a soft thunder and wash of splendid waves breaking on the rocks that here and there divided the flat beach, and, beyond, the infinite variety of the sea.
It was not yet the season for bathing, but boating was a pleasure.
"It isn't a bad sort of place," D'Rubiera said. "I will stay a week or two. I must have a pair of horses down, and a newspaper or two, and some new books, and I think it will be tolerable. You can pick up what servants are necessary, Michele. But, mind, I don't want an establishment, but only enough for a skirmishing sort of a life."
The freshness and beauty of it all lifted a little the growing weight from his heart. He went out rowing or sailing, he rode and drove through the beautiful neighborhood, finding an acquaintance or two, he read novels and newspapers, or he sat in an upper window, his elbows resting on the sill, and gazed off over the water, watching to see how it mocked the land. Now it stretched out a green field and planted it with evergreens. He opened his eyes wide to see the trees stand there dark and tapering in a green like early spring grass. Then it broke up from underneath, with dark running shadows as of lava, and the green field rocked and broke and disappeared in ruin, and a blackness covered the place where it had been. Then a wide space rippled out brightly in the sunshine, and white villas built themselves up, and gardens were all about, dotted with statues; then again a simulated earthquake.
It was beautiful, but it suggested melancholy thoughts of the instability of life and human happiness. He felt, too, the desolateness of an alien element happy in itself and utterly oblivious of him. Not oblivious alone: if it should get hold of him it would strangle him.
He turned away from the sight, beautiful as it was, with a bitter impatience. The thing palled upon him. He was Sisyphus, and his days were heavy stones.
Why did not Laura write to him? He had written to her from Rome, a mere kind little note, as if nothing had happened between them, unless some unusual expressions of regard were proofs that something had happened; and he had written a letter soon after
