DOI article:
Harland, Henry: Cousin Rosalys
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26392#0042
38 Cousin Rosalys
let a day pass. I am writing to her to tell her that you are
coming. She will expect you to call at once.” So, on the
morrow of my arrival, I made an exceedingly careful toilet (I
remember to this day the pains I bestowed upon my tie, the
revisions to which I submitted it !), and, with an anxious heart,
presented myself at the huge brown Roman palace, a portion of
which my formidable relative inhabited : a palace with grated
windows, and a vaulted, crypt-like porte-cochere, and a tremendous
Swiss concierge, in knee-breeches and a cocked hat: the Palazzo
Zacchinelli.
The Swiss, flourishing his staff of office, marshalled me (I can’t
use a less imposing word for the ceremony) slowly, solemnly,
across a courtyard, and up a great stone staircase, at the top of
which he handed me on to a functionary in black—a functionary
with an ominously austere countenance, like an usher to the
Inquisition. Poor old Archimede ! Later, when I had come to
know him well and tip him, I found he was the mildest creature,
the amiablest, the most obliging, and that tenebrious mien of his
only a congenital accident, like a lisp or a club-foot. But for the
present he dismayed me, and I surrendered myself with humility
and meekness to his guardianship. He conducted me through a
series of vast chambers—you know those enormous, ungenial
Roman rooms, their sombre tapestried walls, their formal furniture,
their cheerless, perpetual twilight—and out upon a terrace.
The terrace lay in full sunshine. There was a garden below it,
a garden with orange-trees, and rose-bushes, and camellias, with
stretches of green sward, with shrubberies, with a great fountain
plashing in the midst of it, and broken, moss-grown statues : a
Roman garden, from which a hundred sweet airs came up, in the
gentle Roman weather. The balustrade of the terrace was set at
intervals with flowering plants, in big urn-shaped vases; I don’t
remember
let a day pass. I am writing to her to tell her that you are
coming. She will expect you to call at once.” So, on the
morrow of my arrival, I made an exceedingly careful toilet (I
remember to this day the pains I bestowed upon my tie, the
revisions to which I submitted it !), and, with an anxious heart,
presented myself at the huge brown Roman palace, a portion of
which my formidable relative inhabited : a palace with grated
windows, and a vaulted, crypt-like porte-cochere, and a tremendous
Swiss concierge, in knee-breeches and a cocked hat: the Palazzo
Zacchinelli.
The Swiss, flourishing his staff of office, marshalled me (I can’t
use a less imposing word for the ceremony) slowly, solemnly,
across a courtyard, and up a great stone staircase, at the top of
which he handed me on to a functionary in black—a functionary
with an ominously austere countenance, like an usher to the
Inquisition. Poor old Archimede ! Later, when I had come to
know him well and tip him, I found he was the mildest creature,
the amiablest, the most obliging, and that tenebrious mien of his
only a congenital accident, like a lisp or a club-foot. But for the
present he dismayed me, and I surrendered myself with humility
and meekness to his guardianship. He conducted me through a
series of vast chambers—you know those enormous, ungenial
Roman rooms, their sombre tapestried walls, their formal furniture,
their cheerless, perpetual twilight—and out upon a terrace.
The terrace lay in full sunshine. There was a garden below it,
a garden with orange-trees, and rose-bushes, and camellias, with
stretches of green sward, with shrubberies, with a great fountain
plashing in the midst of it, and broken, moss-grown statues : a
Roman garden, from which a hundred sweet airs came up, in the
gentle Roman weather. The balustrade of the terrace was set at
intervals with flowering plants, in big urn-shaped vases; I don’t
remember