noon
This garden is full of trees , myrtle , wisteria , lilac , acacia -- flowering trees -- with a complement of firs and shining laurel to give a setting to so much golden-green and white . It has a canal on two sides , is a deep , leafy place , where nightingales sing day and night ; it abounds in grass lawns , flowers , weeping trees , and marble _ hermæ _ . The villa itself is very stately , a three-storied house in the Venetian style , from whose upper windows you can command a fine stretch of country ; below you on either hand the Piazza del Santo , the Prato della Valle , with their enormous churches , pink and grey ; beyond these the city walls , the green plain ; lastly , the ragged outline of the far distant hills . It has a courtyard with lemon trees , long , dim rooms empty of all but coolness , shuttered against the glare of noon ; above , a great saloon coffered in the ceiling , frescoed on the walls , with a dais and a throne ; an open loggia full of flowers ; above all this again , raftered bedrooms smelling of lavender . A roomy , stately place for those whose lives move easily in such surroundings ; for Ippolita , the girl of the people , happy in her dark tenement in the Vicolo , gossip of the upper windows , shy beckoner to the street , burnisher of doorposts at sundown -- for Ippolita this windy great house was a prison , neither more nor less . It was a prison , at least , conducted according to the best rules of gallantry then obtaining . They bowed her up the staircase to the refectory : they sat her down and plied her on their knees with fruit and cups of wine .