The pot of basil

It was a very hot day in Colorno, the petty Versailles of the Dukes of Parma. The little channels irrigating the plains all about, and drawn every one from the near depleted bas...

If we are to accept the testimony of Louis XV., an experienced judge in such matters, the beauty of his granddaughter, eldest child of Don Philip of Parma, was in need of no ser...

Even as he spoke, Tiretta regretted, and blushed over, the nature of his mission. It was not its insolence--that was nothing in those days; it was its obvious misapplication. Fo...

The Italy of the eighteenth century has always given me a sense of distressing incongruity, such a sense of incongruity as I feel in the presence of performing animals, pitifull...

Isabella mistrusted few people and disliked nobody for long. She was one of those happily constituted girls who are troubled with no problems, have no quarrel with destiny, and...

And so we reach a situation which, having no least authority to complicate itself, must suffice us in its simplicity to the end. It is a situation as old as the human drama; it...

The next day opened wild and wet. In the night a west wind had driven in from the sea, and drawn a rushing curtain over the rainbow summer of the gardens. Isabella, for no reaso...

A couple of communications, relating to the rather fantastic business in hand, were despatched about this date from Colorno, the one by Tiretta and the other by the _gouvernante...

Tiretta one morning was traversing an inner corridor of the palace on his way to the gardens, when, passing by a private door which gave egress from the Infanta’s apartments, he...

All the glowing air was steeped in incense. The mealy pollen of the orange blossoms, washed out by the rain of the preceding days, had dried and scattered its largesse, powderin...

Fanchette was chattering to Aquaviva, like the intolerable magpie he thought her, when a couple, issuing from the orange grove, came into her ken approaching up a flowery path....

It had been one delirious moment snatched from the hands of fate. So it was understood between them--an impulsive contact, passionate, transient, never to be spoken of or repeat...

He talked, having a willing listener--she laughed at him for a chatterbox. He had long fits of silence--she tried to enter into his dreams. Sometimes he was moody and troubled;...

Somewhere I have read or heard of a marine invertebrate, which, when its stomach disturbs it, throws the oppressive thing away and gets a new one. It is a beautifully simple sol...

Surprised and beset in that moment of unguarded emotionalism, Fanchette had capitulated; and there was an end to her scruples as a reluctant confederate. With the sacrifice of h...

It was a very impressive ceremony, this betrothal by ring--conventual, almost sacramental in its character. The ambassador’s face had been flushed, his voice hushed, as he had p...

It is a pathetic paradox that we never truly acquire anything until we have lost it. To possess rightly what is ours we must be deprived of it, must come to view it down the per...

He stood before the prince, his head erect, his hand motionless upon his sword hilt. Joseph, sitting, as quietly, in the chair he had pushed back from the table, regarded him st...

The real tragedy of separation is not for the banished lover; it is for the desolate home-keeper, who knows no distractions of change and movement to solace her aching heart. He...

Isabella had loved her mother, truly if rather fearfully, and in return had been loved by her with as condescending a devotion as a spirit so incessantly restless and ambitious...

With the afternoon the town had resumed its normal aspect; the shops were re-opened; the stream of grave and frivolous circulated with its wonted restlessness and volubility. On...

It is a mistake to suppose that it is the manly qualities in a man which invariably appeal most to women’s affections. Very often, indeed, it is their exact antitheses--indecisi...

Bissy had a lodger--strictly Bissy, be it understood. Grandfather Aquaviva had declined from the first to be mixed up in the affair, or to do more than subordinate, for the occa...

He held her hands; he gazed as if he could never fill the hunger of his soul; for a minute he failed to speak. In all his passionate dreams he had never pictured her as returnin...

“The balcony whence our Juliet leaned to whisper to her Romeo.” Do you recall how it was mentioned earlier, with wondering if in these days lunatics still came there to gibber t...

The northernmost of the five gates of Parma discharged direct upon the highway that led to Colorno. At intervals from this _embouchure_ came shooting as it were the _disjecta me...

The clocks were pointing near to midnight; the village was long silent; the flurry of the day had subsided everywhere, and sleep and quiet had usurped throughout the palace the...

“And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; She ha...

She was married early in September. When she had been told that it was to be, she had simply acquiesced, quite quietly, quite gravely. “To make _him_ happy”--she had not forgott...