Peasants, climbing to
their work on the hillsides in the twilit hour of dawn, were wont to
encounter that staggering procession headed by Mr. Keith who, with
spectacles all awry and crooning softly to himself, was carried round
the more perilous turnings by a contingent of his devoted retainers.
He found it pleasant to live like this. And now another spring was
nearing to its end. For how many more years, he wondered. . . . That
confounded funeral. . . .
There was a rustle at his back. The southerly breeze had struck
Nepenthe on its morning ripple over the Tyrrhenian, setting things
astir; it searched a passage through those mighty canes which sprouted
in a dank hollow where the rains of winter commingled their waters. The
leaves grew vocal with a sound like the splash of a rivulet. Often had
he listened joyfully to that melody which compensated, to some small
degree, for the lack of the old Duke's twenty-four fountains. Legendary
music! Now it made him sad. What was its burden? MIDAS HAD ASSES' EARS.
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