'When, at last, I heard his voice again, I was on the first terrace. He
was speaking to Francesca in the vestibule. She came out and called to
me to come up.
'I felt my knees giving way beneath me at each step. He held out his
hand to me and he must have noticed the trembling of mine, for I saw a
sudden gleam flash into his eyes. We all three sat down on low cane
lounges in the vestibule, facing the sea. He complained of feeling very
tired, and smoked while he told us of his ride. He had gone as far as
Vicomile, where he had made a halt.
'Vicomile, he said, possesses three wonderful treasures--a pine wood, a
tower, and a fifteenth-century monstrance. Imagine a pine wood, between
the sea and the hill, interspersed by a number of pools that multiply
the trees indefinitely; a campanile in the old rugged Lombardy style
that goes back to the eleventh century--a tree-trunk of stone, as it
were, covered with sculptured sirens and peacocks, serpents and griffins
and dragons--a thousand and one monsters and flowers; and a silver-gilt
monstrance all enamelled, engraved and chased--Gothico-Byzantine in
style and form with a foretaste of Renaissance, the work of Gallucci, an
almost unknown artist, but who was the great forerunner of Benvenuto
Cellini----
'He addressed himself all the time to me. Strange how exactly I remember
every word he says! I could set down any conversation of his, word for
word, from beginning to end; if there were any means of doing so, I
could reproduce every modulation of his voice.
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