Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXXII. The Beginning of the End
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violets, orchids, cyclamens are rising out of the
sweet-scented grass. Clusters of Campanula
gracilis and deep-blue Lithospermum, blue as the
Blue Grotto, are springing out of the very rock.
The lizards are chasing each other among the ivy.
The tortoises are cantering about singing lustily
to themselves—perhaps you do not know that
tortoises can sing? The mongoose seems more
restless than ever. The little Minerva owl flaps
her wings as if she meant to fly off to look up a
friend in the Roman Campagna. Barbarossa,
the big Maremma dog, has vanished on errands
of his own, even my rickety old Tappio looks as
if he would not mind a little spree in Lapland.
Billy wanders up and down under his fig-tree
with a twinkle in his eye and an unmistakable
air of a young man about town, up to anything.
Giovannina is having long talks under the garden
wall with her sunburnt amoroso, it is all right,
they are going to be married after Sant’Antonio.
The sacred mountain above San Michele is full
of birds on their way home to mate and rear
their young. What a joy to me that they can
rest there in peace! Yesterday I picked up a
poor little skylark, so exhausted from his long
journey across the sea that he didn’t even
attempt to fly away, he sat quite still in the palm
of my hand as if he understood it was the hand
of a friend, perhaps a compatriot—I asked him
if he wouldn’t sing me a song before he went off
again, there was no bird-song I liked better than
his; but he said he had no time to spare, he had
to hurry home to Sweden to sing the summer in.
For more than a week the flute-like notes of a
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