Septembris MDCCCLXXXVI.'
CHAPTER II
Schifanoja was situated on the heights at that point where the chain of
hills, after following the curving coast line, took a landward bend and
sloped away towards the plain. Notwithstanding that it had been built in
the latter half of the eighteenth century--by the Cardinal Alfonso
Carafa d'Ateleta--the villa showed a certain purity of architectural
design. It was a square building of two stories, with arched colonnades
alternating with the apartments, which imparted to the whole edifice a
look of lightness and grace. It was a real summer palace, open on all
sides to the breath of the sea. At the side towards the sloping gardens,
a wide hall opened on to a noble double flight of steps leading to a
platform like a vast terrace, surrounded by a stone balustrade and
adorned by two fountains. At either end of this terrace, other flights
of steps interrupted by more terraces led by easy stages almost to the
sea, affording a full view from the level ground of their seven-fold
windings through superb verdure and masses of roses. The special glories
of Schifanoja were its cypresses and its roses. Roses were there of
every kind and for every season, enough '_pour en tirer neuf ou dix
muytz d'eaue rose_' as the poet of the _Vergier d'honneur_ would have
said. The cypresses, sharp-pointed and sombre, more hieratic than the
Pyramids, more enigmatic than the obelisks, were in no respect inferior
either to those of the Villa d'Este, or the Villa Mondragone or any of
the giants growing round the glorious Roman villas.
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