In some shady spots there still remained
piles of snow, like bundles of white wool. The shrill cries of the birds
sounded like the scratching of a diamond on glass. At the edge of the
stairways, the pedestals of black, crumbling stone recalled the statues
and urns they had once supported. The little gardens, cut in geometric
figures, stretched out the Greek square of their carpet of foliage on
each level of the terrace. In the squares, the fountains spurted in
pools surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a
ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,--in the air, in the ground,
whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where
the sun seemed a red blotch of color devoid of heat.
They passed under arches of vines, between huge dying trees covered to
the top with winding rings of ivy that clung to the venerable trunks,
veneered with a green and yellow crust. The paths were bounded on one
side by the slope of the hill, from the top of which came the invisible
tinkling of a bell, and where from time to time there appeared on the
blue background of the sky the massive outline of a slowly moving cow.
On the other, a rustic railing of branches painted white bounded the
path and, beyond it, in the valley, lay the dark flower beds with their
melancholy solitude and their fountains that wept day and night in an
atmosphere of old age and abandon. The closely matted brambles stretched
from tree to tree along the slopes.
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