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useful to him, for he had taken most of his stones
for his garden walls from there.
I climbed over the wall and walked up the
narrow lane to the chapel. The floor was
covered to a man’s height with the débris of the
fallen vault, the walls were covered with ivy and
wild honeysuckle and hundreds of lizards played
merrily about among big bushes of myrtle and
rosemary stopping now and then in their game
to look at me with lustrous eyes and panting
breasts. An owl rose on noiseless wings from a
dark corner, and a large snake asleep on the
sunlit mosaic floor of the terrace, unfolded slowly
his black coils and glided back into the chapel
with a warning hiss at the intruder. Was it the
ghost of the sombre old Emperor still haunting
the ruins where his imperial villa once stood?
I looked down at the beautiful island at my
feet. How could he live in such a place and be
so cruel! thought I. How could his soul be so
dark with such a glorious light on Heaven and
Earth! How could he ever leave this place, to
retire to that other even more inaccessible villa
of his on the eastern cliffs, which still bears his
name and where he spent the last three years
of his life?
To live in such a place as this, to die in such a
place, if ever death could conquer the
everlasting joy of such a life! What daring dream
had made my heart beat so violently a moment
ago when Mastro Vincenzo had told me that he
was getting old and tired, and that his son
wanted him to sell his house? What wild
thoughts had flashed through my boisterous
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