It was all a mystery, but life itself was mysterious, and she was
little more than a child in years though she had never had what one
calls a real childhood.

She often used to sit by her window, the sliding blinds partly drawn
together, but leaving a space through which she could look down at the
city, with a glimpse of Saint Peter's in the distance against the warm
haze of the low Campagna. Rome seemed as far from her then as if she
saw it in a vision a thousand miles away, and the very faint sounds
from the distance were like voices in a dream. Then, if she closed her
eyes a moment, she could see the dark streets about the Palazzo Conti,
and the one open corner of the palace, high up in the sunlight; she
could smell the acrid air that used to come up to her in the early
morning when the panes were opened, damp and laden with odours not
sweet but familiar in the heart of Rome; odours compounded of
cabbages, stables, cheese and mud, and occasionally varied by the
fumes of roasting coffee, or the sour vapours from a wine cart that
was unloading stained casks, all wet with red juice, at the door of
the wine shop far below, a dark little wine shop with a dry bush stuck
out through a smoky little grated window, and a humble sign displaying
the prices of drink in roughly painted blue and red figures. For her
room had looked upon the narrowest and darkest of the streets, though
it had been stately enough within, and luxuriously furnished, besides
containing some objects of value and beauty over which there would be
much bidding and squabbling of amateurs and experts when the great
sale took place.

It had been gloomy and silent and loveless, the life down there; and
yet she would have gone back to it if she could, from the sunshine of
the Via Ludovisi, and from the overpowering freshness of the Volterra