The San Francisco call., 1905-05-07

green-shuttered against the sun.
Round about lay new cornfields busy
with scarlet -bodiced peasants, forests
and hills sagy-green with olive, ana
further off the clear Carrara peaks ana
the solemn hoary Apennines. At night
a breeze fragrant as wood smoke, cool
ing the myrtle hedges fiecked with the
first pale-green meteors of the firefiies.
The few English residents had long
grown used TO the singular fgure or
Shelley, beardless and hatless, habited
like a boy in stinted jaGxet and trou-
sers-that mild philosopher at war with
the theories of society: a fresher di-
vertissement had stirred them when
the ola Lanfranchi Palace. built by
Michael Angelo, on the Lung Arno,
was thrown open in the autumn for Il
new occupant-a man whose striking
face and halting step made him mark
ed. The news flew among the gossipS
in a day.
George Gordon was not alone, it was
whispered over indignant teacups; with
him was a Ravannese Contessa who
had eloped by his aid out of Romagna.
Report averred that he had duelled
with her husband, and after spiriting
her beyond the frontier, had returned
to Ravenna to shoot down a military
commandant who had attempted to
interfere Luckily for him, the story
police, relieved to be quit of him, had
allowed the execrated peer to depart
unmofested with his chattels. For a
time the Lanfranchi neighborhood was
avoided, but at length, curiosity over
came rigid decorum; femininity forgot
its prudence and watched with open
eagerness.
Except for Shelley and his young wife,
Gordon chose seclusfon even from the
Italian circles, where title was an open
sesame and uninsular laxity not un-
forgiven. This fact became unmis-
taxable when a billet from no less a
parsonage than the Grand Duchess,
Princess OF the House of Saxony,
brought from the Lanfranchi Palace
clear declination- The gossips held up
their hands and subsided.
For the primal object of this curiosity
the winter. with its thaws and siroccos,
had passed swiftly. In the present, SO
full of sweet surprise and unfolding,
even Teresas long anxiety because Of
her brothers non-appearance and the
b0ding with which Gordon watched for
a sign from Trevanion, or from Count
Guiccioli-who he knew would read
rightly the enigma of her reputed death
and after disappearance-had softened
finally to an undisturbed content.
The full measure of love was theirs.
nations had dulled away, and Pisa
and the old Lanfranchi pile constituted
an inner roseate haven belonging
wholly and only to themselves. A
cloistered city, its old grandeur de-
parted and seemingly, but half in
habited; the river drifting by, the
house of the Sheheys on the opposite
bank; boats and horses: a garden
sweet with orange trees and gushes
of violets along shady wolks; a few
servants marshaled by Fletcher and
Tita: study and books-and Te-
resa. 1t was the home Gordon had
dreamed of when his arms were
around her at the villa chapel, but
more satisfying, more complete.
Sometimes, in this Elysian life of
theirs, as he felt her head against his
knee while he read her new verses of
his-for now he knew oftener the old
melodic pen-mood that at Venice had
seemed vanished forever and that had
first returned in the hour he had
etched those lines on the fungus-he
was conscious of sudden tightening
of the heart. Could 1t last? The poi
son of his fame had gone deep. He
lived at peace only by sufferance of
military authority, now busy aveng-
ing its late alarm by the black SEN
tence and prescription. At any mo-
msA: il might recommence In Tus-