Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/233

 reminded the aged man of her wonderful mature sisters, under whose umbrella-shaped crowns he had been wont to lay down the languid body of his Roman mistress on a bed of copper-coloured wild lilies and tenderest anemone leaves. All that his endless cruises along the coast and melancholy drives through the Campagna had meant to him, was enshrined in this insignificant little tree.

Far back, at the end of the plantation, a larch bristled with clumps of delicate needles. Thirty years ago it had been a tiny tree in a clearing, and had marked Christopher’s place in a duel with a famous swordsman. He had thought it unlikely on that occasion that he would return alive. But the Sempervivum, a blossom that possesses magic charms, being the plant of immortality, was growing around him thickly from the crevices of the crumbling terrace; the herb of the blue-green god, brought hither from Greece.

Then there were trees and shrubs at which Count Christopher hardly dared to look; at least he always took off his eyes as soon as they fell on them, as though they had been scorched with glowing coals. Some memories one carefully avoids, perhaps for the very reason that it is no longer necessary to do so.