This
rustic Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed with
the scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak of
enthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to represent in
his park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The
most charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys,
and prospects the most picturesque that could be brought from abroad,
Borromean islands floating on clear eddying streams like so many rays,
which concentrate their various lustres on a single point, on an Isola
Bella, from which the enchanted eye takes in each detail at its
leisure, or on an island in the bosom of which is a little house
concealed under the drooping foliage of a century-old ash, an island
fringed with irises, rose-bushes, and flowers which appears like an
emerald richly set. Ah! one might rove a thousand leagues for such a
place! The most sickly, the most soured, the most disgusted of our men
of genius in ill health would die of satiety at the end of fifteen
days, overwhelmed with the luscious sweetness of fresh life in such a
spot.
The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed
had neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which
he kept. A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column,
served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept
chained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris
than in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation.
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