Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/53

Rh beechen hedges and tall cypress trees. The little one beside me spread out her white veil as well as she could to shield me from the sun, and her little crown of flowers, pale roses and myrtles,—is resting against my shoulder, and the dust circling round us shuts us in like a wall.

Cannons roar. We are in front of the villa of Perovic. It is really only a massive, four cornered tower dating from imperial days with frequent additions, which had been added to it in the course of centuries, having been built out of the heaps of surrounding ruins. It consisted of huge, unadorned, white-washed rooms, and provided most sparingly with furniture. Only in the great entrance way—the tinello—was there furniture.

Some art loving ancestor had adorned the walls with pictures. In the midst of bright red fields a little nymph—a little picture of a nymph making music, painted just as craftsmen painted on the walls of Pompeii, and framed in the most baroque old Italian manner. There are decorations above the doors, here and there a frieze—wreaths of flowers, fruit. In a huge room opening out of this the table is set, about it are coarse chairs with straw-woven seats, which before had been placed