In this they were disappointed. He spoke of these things as "sins of
his youth," professing an invincible distaste, in these later years,
for the drudgery of work. He called himself an old dreamer. There was a
shed, it is true, attached to the house, a shed which went by the name
of a studio. All visitors were taken to see this atelier. It was
smothered in dust and cobwebs. Clearly, as the Count himself would
explain with a honeyed smile, it had not been in use for twenty years
or more.
Mr. van Koppen knew all this.
He knew about that strip of land which the old man had reserved for
himself at the sale of his ancestral domain. It lay among the hills,
some twenty or thirty miles above the classic site of Locri. On this
spot, people were given to understand, fragments of old marbles and
vases had been picked up by the peasantry within the last years. Things
of small worth--pottery mostly; they lay about Count Caloveglia's
Nepenthe courtyard and were given by him, as keepsakes, to any visitor
who showed an interest in them.
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