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STRAIT IS THE GATE 198

24th May . Juliette is dozing on a sofa near me in the open gallery which is the chief charm of the house, built as it is after the Italian fashion. The gallery opens on to the gravelled courtyard which is a continuation of the garden. Without leaving her sofa, Juliette can see the lawn sloping down to the piece of water, where a tribe of parti coloured ducks disport themselves and two swans sail. A stream which, they say, never runs dry in the heat of any summer, feeds it and then flows through the garden, which merges into a grove of ever-increasing wildness, more and more shut in by the bed of a dried torrent on the one side and the vineyards on the other, and finally strangled altogether between them. Edouard Teissières yesterday showed my father the garden, the farm, the cellars and the vine yards, while I stayed behind with Juliette — so that this morning, while it was still very early, I was able to make my first voyage of discovery in the park, by myself. A great many plants and strange trees, whose names, however, I should have liked to know. I pick a twig of each of them so as to be told what they are, at lunch. In some of them I recognise the evergreen oaks which Jerome admired in the gardens of the Villa

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