Love In The Villa Quotes

When I was a child, luxury was fur coats, evening dresses, and villas by the sea. Later on, I thought it meant leading the life of an intellectual. Now I feel that it is also being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.

Soon after the completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His hour came,—the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the horizon,—that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered only as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the figure,—he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman, in one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly, his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her guardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the wife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has done, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort. Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once into a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time of the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand dollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow. The married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining a brilliant circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake Pontchartrain, when, one day, a letter was brought to him in that well-remembered writing. It was handed to him while he was in full tide of gay and successful conversation, in a whole room-full of company. He turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his composure, and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at the moment carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a short time after, was missed from the circle. In his room,alone, he opened and read the letter, now worse than idle and useless to be read. It was from her, giving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed by her guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and she related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive; how she had written time and again, till she became weary and doubtful; how her health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had discovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both. The letter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions of undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy young man. He wrote to her immediately: I have received yours,—but too late. I believed all I heard. I was desperate. I am married, and all is over. Only forget,—it is all that remains for either of us." And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St. Clare. But the real remained,—the real, like the flat, bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,—exceedingly real. Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.

On our honeymoon we talked and talked. We stayed in a beachfront villa, and we drank rum and lemonade and talked so much that I never even noticed what color the sea was. Whenever I need to stop and remind myself how much I once loved Andrew, I only need to think about this. That the ocean covers seven tenths of the earth's surface, and yet my husband could make me not notice it.

In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.

Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy, Just because you're cynical Doesn't mean you're cool. You may tell the greatest lies And wear a brilliant digsuise But you can't escape the eyes of the one who sees right through you. In the end what will prevail Is your passion not your tale. For love is the Holy Grail, Even in Cognito. So better listen to me, sister, and pay close attention, mister: It's very good to play the game, Amuse the gods, avoid the pain, But don't trust fortune, don't trust fame, Your real self doesn't know your name And in that we're all the same: We're all incognito.

Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. When shutting drawers and flinging wide an hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of Aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood. This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. Today we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.

There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler.

I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. And I thought if I was going to die I would die with you. Someone like you, young as I am, I saw so many dying near me in the last year. I didn’t feel scared. I certainly wasn’t brave just now. I thought to myself, We have this villa this grass, we should have lain down together, you in my arms, before we died. I wanted to touch that bone at your neck, collarbone, it’s like a small hard wing under your skin. I wanted to place my fingers against it. I’ve always liked flesh the colour of rivers and rocks or like the brown eye of a Susan, do you know what that flower is? Have you seen them? I am so tired, Kip, I want to sleep. I want to sleep under this tree, put my eye against your collarbone I just want to close my eyes without thinking of others, want to find the crook of a tree and climb into it and sleep. What a careful mind! To know which wire to cut. How did you know? You kept saying I don’t know I don’t know, but you did. Right? Don’t shake, you have to be a still bed for me, let me curl up as if you were a good grandfather I could hug, I love the word ‘curl,’ such a slow word, you can’t rush it...

If I did not move and dance between them the three would turn to stone, for they are passive [...] They would fall asleep if I lay still somewhere. Henry, Gonzalo, Hugh. [...] It is only my dancing, my dancing which animates them. I slide out of Gonzalo's bed like a snake. I slide out of Henry's bed. I slide out of Hugh's bed. [...] I dance untrammeled - return to each full of the space in between, that change of air. Dancing, I find my flame and my joy, because I dance, slide, run, to the boat, to quai de Passy, to Villa Seurat; I keep the wind in the folds of my dress, the rain on my hair, and light in my eyes.

I shall talk to you through trees, through the arms of dancers, through sweet words uttered by many lovers. The arms of dancers round you shall be my arms. The eyes of men admiring you shall be my eyes. I have many arms, many eyes. It is that, loving you, I have become many lovers.

I saw us on the roof of the Villas, so young and innocent, falling in love. I saw us spending every day together, full of passion and excitement to have found someone that fit us so perfectly.

You care so much for that special person because it feels like that person is part of you.

Michael looked around the beautiful garden with its many colored flowers, fragrant lemon trees, the old statures of the gods dug from ancient ruins, other newer ones of holy saints, the rose-colored walls across the villa. It was a lovely setting for the examination of twelve murderous apostles.

Which is better? - To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort - no struggled; - but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flower covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time - for he would - oh, yes, he would have love me well for a while.

I don't need you by my side. But I want you there. Very much want you there. That, I think, says more. Means more." He took the hand she held out to him. "We'll go down. James should be here soon

He looked on in silence at the proof of what Israelis already know, that their history is contrived from the bones and traditions of Palestinians. The Europeans who came knew neither hummus nor falafel but later proclaimed them authentic Jewish cuisine." They claimed the villas of Qatamon as "old Jewish homes. They had no old photographs or ancient drawings of their ancestry living on the land, loving it, and planting it. They arrived from foreign nations and uncovered coins in Palestines earth from the Canaanites, the Romans, the ottomans, then sold them as their own "ancient Jewish artifacts." They came to Jaffa and found oranges the size of watermelons and said, "Behold! The Jews are known for their oranges." But those oranges were the culmination of centuries of Palestinian farmers perfecting the art of citrus growing.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He DID love me--no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour- -suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next- -or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

... that eternally restless, eternally unquenched desire for naked paganism, that love that is the supreme joy, that is divine serenity itself- those things are useless for you moderns, you children of reflection. That sort of love wreaks havoc on you. As soon as you wish to be natural you become normal. To you Nature seems hostile, you have turned us laughing Greek deities into demons and me into a devil. All you can do is exorcise me and curse me or else sacrifice yourselves, slaughter yourselves in bacchanalian madness at my alter. And if you ever has the courage to kiss my red lips, he then goes on a pilgrimage to Rome, barefoot and in a penitent's shirt, and expects flowers to blossom from his withered staff, while roses, violets, and myrtles sprout constantly under my feet- but their fragrance doesn't agree with you, So just stay in your northern fog and Christian incense. Let us pagans rest under the rubble, under lava. Do not dig us up. Pompeii, our villas, our baths, our temples were not built for you people! You need no gods! We freeze in your world!

You can live your life to please others, and will never be quite well, never be totally alive, or you can live the life you want, to please yourself,’ she’d said to Delia. Delia had been disbelieving, alarmed. ‘What shall I do if I don’t sing? It’s all I can do, and I love music.’ ‘Sing something entirely different,

I like fire and water. You are lucky to have both right here.” From " Desperate Pursuit in Venice" Chapter Two. Kataryna's response to Luca.

You are my light when i'm in the dark

I can no more hear Love’s Voice.

we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.

HAPPENING APART FROM WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND IT There is a vividness to eleven years of love because it is over. A clarity of Greece now because I live in Manhattan or New England. If what is happening is part of what’s going on around what’s occurring, it is impossible to know what is truly happening. If love is part of the passion, part of the fine food or the villa on the Mediterranean, it is not clear what the love is. When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, “What is the sound of the waterfall?” “Silence,” he finally told me. The stillness I did not notice until the sound of water falling made apparent the silence I had been hearing long before. I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman’s heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don’t have a name for.

Kids are still up," David commented, noting the guest house was lit up like a Vegas casino. "I'll have to kill them." "Yes, I've noticed what a terrifying and brutal father you are. And how your children fear you." He slanted her a look. "I wouldn't mind seeing the occasional tremble out of them." "I think it's way too late for that. You've gone and raised two happy, well-adjusted kids

. "I should be home by midnight." "Dad, I need a car." "Uh-huh. And I need a villa in the south of France. Go figure. Lights out at eleven," he added as he turned away. "I've got to have wheels,

In February 62, Seneca came up against an unalterable reality. Nero ceased to listen to his old tutor, he shunned his company, encouraged slander of him at court and appointed a bloodthirsty praetorian prefect, Ofonius Tigellinus, to assist him in indulging his taste for random murder and sexual cruelty. Virgins were taken off the streets of Rome and brought to the emperor’s chambers. Senators’ wives were forced to participate in orgies, and saw their husbands killed in front of them. Nero roamed the city at night disguised as an ordinary citizen and slashed the throats of passers-by in back alleys. He fell in love with a young boy who he wished could have been a girl, and so he castrated him and went through a mock wedding ceremony. Romans wryly joked that their lives would have been more tolerable if Nero’s father Domitius had married that sort of a woman. Knowing he was in extreme danger, Seneca attempted to withdraw from court and remain quietly in his villa outside Rome. Twice he offered his resignation; twice Nero refused, embracing him tightly and swearing that he would rather die than harm his beloved tutor. Nothing in Seneca’s experience could allow him to believe such promises.

…”The Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don’t suppose it will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends of Mr. Vyse’s. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest people! For our part we liked them, didn’t we?” He appealed to Lucy. “There was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine’s great stories. ‘My dear sister loves flowers,’ it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue — vases and jugs — and the story ends with ‘So ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful.’ It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.”…

I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all. I was a poet and a grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed before all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not merely shameful, but had in them much that was "sublime and beautiful" something in the Manfred style. Everyone would kiss me and weep (what idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against the obscurantists. Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes, and so on, and so on — as though you did not know all about it?

ANNABETH WANTED TO HATE NEW ROME. But as an aspiring architect, she couldn’t help admiring the terraced gardens, the fountains and temples, the winding cobblestone streets and gleaming white villas. After the Titan War last summer, she’d gotten her dream job of redesigning the palaces of Mount Olympus. Now, walking through this miniature city, she kept thinking, I should have made a dome like that. I love the way those columns lead into that

In no time, I'd beaten cream cheese and butter and confectioners' sugar and more vanilla with my electric hand mixer till the icing was real light and fluffy, and when the cakes were cooled a little, I handed Billy Po a serrated knife, showed him how to level the tops, and we both tasted the rich leftover pieces of cake. "Boy, that's delicious," he exclaimed as he nibbled real slow and his eyes got big. "Know what I love?" I said. "All those different textures. The smooth bananas, the stringy pineapple, and crunchy pecans. Nothing like it.

in blue wihout when blues dream bears the only living girls are gold quickly the living boys will bring them stars and stars will sing them bells in bells without when bells dream blooms the only living boys are brave quickly the living girls will bring them dooms and dooms will praise their love

Oh Brancepeth,’ said the girl, her voice trembling, ‘why haven’t you any money? If only you had the merest pittance - enough for a flat in Mayfair and a little weekend place in the country somewhere and a couple of good cars and a villa in the South of France and a bit of trout fishing on some decent river, I would risk all for love.

It's weird not being in our subculture of two any more. There was Jen's culture, her little habits and ways of doing things; the collection of stuff she'd already learnt she loved before we met me. Chorizo and Jonathan Franken and long walks and the Eagles (her dad). Seeing the Christmas lights. Taylor Swift, frying pans in the dishwasher, the works absolutely, arsewipe, heaven. Tracy Chapman and prawn jalfrezi and Muriel Spark and HP sauce in bacon sandwiches. And then there was my culture. Steve Martin and Aston Villa and New York and E.T. Chicken bhuna, strange-looking cats and always having squash or cans of soft drinks in the house. The Cure. Pink Floyd. Kanye West, friend eggs, ten hours' sleep, ketchup in bacon sandwiches. Never missing dental check-ups. Sister Sledge (my mum). Watching TV even if the weather is nice. Cadbury's Caramel. John and Paul and George and Ringo. And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more. Period dramas on a Sunday night. That one perfect vibrator that finished her off in seconds when we were in a rush. Gravy. David Hockney. Truffle crisps. Can you believe it? I still can't believe it. A smell indisputably reminiscent of bums. On a crisp. And yet we couldn't get enough of them together - stuffing them in our gobs, her hand on my chest, me trying not to get crumbs in her hair as we watched Sense and Sensibility (1995). But I'm not a member of that club anymore. No one is. It's been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where so I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I'm no longer a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?

A picnic basket in Paris is like a treasure chest- untold riches in a limited space. The first apricots had appeared at the market, their skins fading from speckled red to glowing orange to burnished gold, like the sun-bleached walls of an Italian villa. There were tiny cucumbers, as thick as my thumb and curled like a ribbon. I'd become obsessed with a new fruit called a pêche plat, a flat peach. Imagine a perfectly ripe white peach that someone has sat on. Gwendal picked up a tomato and bit into it like an apple. I did the same. At the bottom of the basket was a carefully folded square of waxed paper. Inside was a small mound of rillettes, shredded pork cooked in its own fat until meltingly smooth.

The International Idea, The largest and the clearest, Is welding all the nations now, Except the one that’s nearest. This compromise has long been known, This scheme of partial pardons, In ethical societies And small suburban gardens— The villas and the chapels where I learned with little labour The way to love my fellow-man And to hate my next-door neighbor.

She knit me a shawl and told me stories of a painful history. Pinochet. Innocent people sunk to the bottom of the ocean. I visited the prison, Villa Grimaldi, and it was heart-wrenching . . . the artifacts, the proof of treachery. There remains speculation that Neruda might not have died of cancer but, rather, had been murdered at the hands of Pinochet’s regime.

standing back a few yards from a dusty road, was almost identical. But on this side the four windows were barred, and the central door was of oak. The villa had two medium-sized bedrooms on the upper floor and on the ground floor a sitting-room and a kitchen, part of which was walled off into a lavatory. There was no bathroom. The drowsy luxurious silence of early afternoon was broken by the sound of a car coming down the road. It stopped in front of the villa. There was the tinny clang of a car door being slammed and the car drove on. The door bell rang twice. The naked man beside the swimming pool did not move, but, at the noise of the bell and of the departing car, his eyes had for an instant opened very wide. It was as if the eyelids had pricked

On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!" We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in. "Get down! Get down!" he barked. "Some American guests are coming this way. It is harmful to the prestige of our motherland for them to see all these messy heads!" We tried to crouch down, but the bus was too crowded. The man shouted, "It is the duty of everyone to safeguard the honor of our motherland! We must present an orderly and dignified appearance! Get down! Bend your knees!" Suddenly I heard Jin-ming's booming voice: "Doesn'T Chairman Mao instruct us never to bend our knees to American imperialists?" This was asking for trouble. Humor was not appreciated. The man shot a stern glance in our direction, but said nothing. He gave the bus another quick scan, and hurried off. He did not want the "American guests' to witness a scene. Any sign of discord had to be hidden from foreigners. Wherever we went as we traveled down the Yangtze we saw the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: temples smashed, statues toppled, and old towns wrecked. Litfie evidence remained of China's ancient civilization. But the loss went even deeper than this. Not only had China destroyed most of its beautiful things, it had lost its appreciation of them, and was unable to make new ones. Except for the much-scarred but still stunning landscape, China had become an ugly country.

Her pretty name of Adina seemed to me to have somehow a mystic fitness to her personality. Behind a cold shyness, there seemed to lurk a tremulous promise to be franker when she knew you better. Adina is a strange child; she is fanciful without being capricious. She was stout and fresh-coloured, she laughed and talked rather loud, and generally, in galleries and temples, caused a good many stiff British necks to turn round. She had a mania for excursions, and at Frascati and Tivoli she inflicted her good-humoured ponderosity on diminutive donkeys with a relish which seemed to prove that a passion for scenery, like all our passions, is capable of making the best of us pitiless. Adina may not have the shoulders of the Venus of Milo...but I hope it will take more than a bauble like this to make her stoop. Adina espied the first violet of the year glimmering at the root of a cypress. She made haste to rise and gather it, and then wandered further, in the hope of giving it a few companions. Scrope sat and watched her as she moved slowly away, trailing her long shadow on the grass and drooping her head from side to side in her charming quest. It was not, I know, that he felt no impulse to join her; but that he was in love, for the moment, with looking at her from where he sat. Her search carried her some distance and at last she passed out of sight behind a bend in the villa wall. I don't pretend to be sure that I was particularly struck, from this time forward, with something strange in our quiet Adina. She had always seemed to me vaguely, innocently strange; it was part of her charm that in the daily noiseless movement of her life a mystic undertone seemed to murmur "You don't half know me! Perhaps we three prosaic mortals were not quite worthy to know her: yet I believe that if a practised man of the world had whispered to me, one day, over his wine, after Miss Waddington had rustled away from the table, that there was a young lady who, sooner or later, would treat her friends to a first class surprise, I should have laid my finger on his sleeve and told him with a smile that he phrased my own thought. .."That beautiful girl," I said, "seems to me agitated and preoccupied." "That beautiful girl is a puzzle. I don't know what's the matter with her; it's all very painful; she's a very strange creature. I never dreamed there was an obstacle to our happiness--to our union. She has never protested and promised; it's not her way, nor her nature; she is always humble, passive, gentle; but always extremely grateful for every sign of tenderness. Till within three or four days ago, she seemed to me more so than ever; her habitual gentleness took the form of a sort of shrinking, almost suffering, deprecation of my attentions, my petits soins, my lovers nonsense. It was as if they oppressed and mortified her--and she would have liked me to bear more lightly. I did not see directly that it was not the excess of my devotion, but my devotion itself--the very fact of my love and her engagement that pained her. When I did it was a blow in the face. I don't know what under heaven I've done! Women are fathomless creatures. And yet Adina is not capricious, in the common sense... .So these are peines d'amour?" he went on, after brooding a moment. "I didn't know how fiercely I was in love!" Scrope stood staring at her as she thrust out the crumpled note: that she meant that Adina--that Adina had left us in the night--was too large a horror for his unprepared sense...."Good-bye to everything! Think me crazy if you will. I could never explain. Only forget me and believe that I am happy, happy, happy! Adina Beati."... Love is said to be par excellence the egotistical passion; if so Adina was far gone. "I can't promise to forget you," I said; "you and my friend here deserve to be remembered!

Lady Kestrel?” said an anxious voice. Kestrel opened her eyes to see a girl dressed in a Herrani serving uniform. “Yes?” “Will you please follow me? There is a problem with your escort.” Kestrel stood. “What’s wrong?” “He has stolen something.” Kestrel rushed from the room, wishing the girl would move more quickly down the villa’s halls. There must be some mistake. Arin was intelligent, far too canny to do something so dangerous. He must know what happened to Herrani thieves. The girl led Kestrel into the library. Several men were gathered there: two senators, who held Arin by his arms, and Irex, whose expression when he saw Kestrel was gloating, as if he had just drawn a high tile in Bite and Sting. “Lady Kestrel,” he said, “what exactly did you bring into my house?” Kestrel looked at Arin, who refused to return her gaze. “He wouldn’t steal.” She heard something desperate in her voice. Irex must have, too. He smiled. “We saw him,” said one of the senators. “He was slipping that inside his shirt.” He nodded at a book that had fallen to the floor. No. The accusation couldn’t be true. No slave would risk a flogging for theft, not for a book. Kestrel steadied herself. “May I?” she asked Irex, nodding at the fallen book. He swept a hand to indicate permission. Kestrel stooped to retrieve the book, and Arin’s eyes flashed to hers. Her heart failed. His face was twisted with misery. She considered the closed, leather-bound book in her hands. She recognized the title: it was a volume of Herrani poetry, a common one. There was a copy in her library as well. Kestrel held the book, not understanding, not seeing anything worth the risk of theft--at least not here, from Irex’s library, when her own could easily serve Arin’s purposes. A suspicion whispered in her mind. She recalled Arin’s odd question in the carriage. Where are we going? His tone had been incredulous. Yet he had known their destination. Now Kestrel wondered if he had recognized something in the passing landscape that she hadn’t, and if his question had been less a question than the automatic words of someone sickened by a sudden understanding. She opened the book. “Don’t,” said Arin. “Please.” But she had already seen the inscription. For Arin, it read, from Amma and Etta, with love. This was Arin’s home. This house had been his, this library his, this book his, dedicated to him by his parents, some ten years ago.

He had grown up among people to whom such emotions were unknown. The old Marquess's passion for his fields and woods was the love of the agriculturist and the hunter, not that of the naturalist or the poet; and the aristocracy of the cities regarded the country merely as so much soil from which to draw their maintenance. The gentlefolk never absented themselves from town but for a few weeks of autumn, when they went to their villas for the vintage, transporting thither all the diversions of city life and venturing no farther afield than the pleasure-grounds that were but so many open-air card-rooms, concert-halls and theatres. Odo's tenderness for every sylvan function of renewal and decay, every shifting of light and colour on the flying surface of the year, would have been met with the same stare with which a certain enchanting Countess

When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla. They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement. Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.

Great cities invite you to love them in extreme close-up, to love every inch of them. And the more eccentric, convoluted, broken, and uneven they are, the more there is to love. The tenements on the Lower East Side in New York City, the decaying wooden houses above the waterfront in Istanbul, the fading rose-colored buildings in the magical little grid south of the Spanish Steps in Rome, the bombed-out villas near the Vucciria in Palermo—it is precisely the irregularity of these places that allows your heart to get a grip on them, like a climber finding a tiny hold that will not give way. Shimmering Venice has the most beautiful inches of any city in the world. San Francisco cannot compete, because it does not have streets made of water. But it has the next best thing: It has dirt trails. They make this city a place where mystery is measured in soft footsteps, and magic in clouds of dust.

Europeans do not understand North America but for the varying news outlets they read, most of which are in their own languages. Filled with their own cultural bias or lacklustre understanding, their analysis of the average North American lacks the most basic feeling. Simply because we can ride helicopters to our villas in the country or accumulate vast amounts of wealth and buy houses in Europe they think we care for nothing but money. The British especially, seeing their so-called brutish empire now long dead have only their incomprehensible accents to hold dear and berate the North American for not speaking true English. Yet it’s another sign of status and of money. But North Americans don’t care for money in the slightest. Most of us spend it the moment we acquire it whether in intelligence or not. Money is nothing to us but the idol and ideal of success. We are the true idealists. Of course we have set our ideal on the wrong idol; the only true idol for a man ought to be his passion, and a passion cannot be money since it is tangible and sensible.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question—Which is better?—To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort—no struggle;—but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time—for he would—oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He did love me—no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me—it is what no man besides will ever be.—But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

Meantime, let me ask myself one question—Which is better?—To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort—no struggle;—but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time—for he would—oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He did love me—no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me—it is what no man besides will ever be.—But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!

Rachael Ray was in the middle of making small lemon bars, which reminded me almost immediately of a new recipe for lemon drop cookies I'd been wanting to try and maybe serve at an upcoming children's birthday party I had scheduled. Like I say, cooking can be like therapy for me when I'm real upset, and no sooner had I grabbed a bag of lemon drop candy in the cabinet, wrapped the nuggets in a towel, and begun beating them to bits with a hammer than I calmed down and concentrated on making the batter just right. Butter, sugar, grated lemon rind, heavy cream, an egg, flour baking powder and salt, the crushed candy- the ingredients couldn't have been simpler. What I wondered about was whether the candy would melt during the baking, and I got my answer after the cookies had been in the oven about twelve minutes, and I finally bit into a cooled one, and noticed a slight crunch that was one of the most wonderful sensations I'd ever experienced. Yeah, the cookies were out of this world, and I knew the kids would love 'em, but since I personally like most of my cookies to be kinda chewy, I did decide then and there that the next time I baked a batch, I'd test the texture after only ten minutes of baking- or till just the edges of the cookies browned. I also decided these cookies could give Miss Rachael Ray's lemon bars a good run for their money, and that they should have me on that program doing something a little different. I mean, anybody can make ordinary lemon bars.

In the poem, Inanna, unveiled, sees her own mysterious depth, Ereshkigal, who glares back at her. She has an immediate, full experience of her underworld self. That naked moment is like the fifth scene in the Villa of Mysteries where the faun, looking into a mirror bowl, sees reflected back a mask of terrible Dionysus as lord of the underworld. It is the moment of self-confrontation for the goddess of active life and love. Archetypally, these eyes of death are implacable and profound, seeing an immediateness that finds pretense, ideals, even individuality and relatedness, irrelevant. They also hold and enable the mystery of a radically different, precultural mode of perception. Like the eyes in the skulls around the house of the Russian nature goddess and witch, Baba-Yaga, they perceive with an objectivity like that of nature itself and our dreams, boring into the soul to find the naked truth, to see reality beneath all its myriad forms and the illusions and defenses it displays. Western science once aspired to such vision. But we humans do not have such objective eyes. We can see only limited and relative, indeterminate truths. We and our subjectivity are part of the reality we seek to see. Before the vision of Ereshkigal, however, objective reality is unmasked. It is nothing"Neti,neti," as the Sanskrit says and yet everything, the place of paradox behind the veil of the Great Goddess and the temple of wisdom. These eyes see from and embody the starkness of the abyss that takes all back, reduces the dancing, playing maya of the goddess to inert matter and stops life on earth.

And for the four remaining days - the ninety-six remaining hours - we mapped out a future away from everything we knew. When the walls of the map were breached, we gave one another courage to build them again. And we imagined our home an old stone barn filled with junk and wine and paintings, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and bees. I remember our final day in the villa. We were supposed to be going that evening, taking the sleeper back to England. I was on edge, a mix of nerves and excitement, looking out to see if he made the slightest move toward leaving, but he didn’t. Toiletries remained on the bathroom shelves, clothes stayed scattered across the floor. We went to the beach as usual, lay side by side in our usual spot. The heat was intense and we said little, certainly nothing of our plans to move up to Provence, to the lavender and light. To the fields of sunflowers. I looked at my watch. We were almost there. It was happening. I kept saying to myself, he’s going to do it. I left him on the bed dozing, and went out to the shop to get water and peaches. I walked the streets as if they were my new home. Bonjour to everyone, me walking barefoot, oh so confident, free. And I imagined how we’d go out later to eat, and we’d celebrate at our bar. And I’d phone Mabel and Mabel would say, I understand. I raced back to the villa, ran up the stairs and died. Our rucksacks were open on the bed, our shoes already packed away inside. I watched him from the door. He was silent, his eyes red. He folded his clothes meticulously, dirty washing in separate bags. I wanted to howl. I wanted to put my arms around him, hold him there until the train had left the station. I’ve got peaches and water for the journey, I said. Thank you, he said. You think of everything. Because I love you, I said. He didn’t look at me. The change was happening too quickly. Is there a taxi coming? My voice was weak, breaking. Madame Cournier’s taking us. I went to open the window, the scent of tuberose strong. I lit a cigarette and looked at the sky. An airplane cast out a vivid orange wake that ripped across the violet wash. And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit. The bottle of pastis? he said. I smiled at him. You take it, I said. We lay in our bunks as the sleeper rattled north and retraced the journey of ten days before. The cabin was dark, an occasional light from the corridor bled under the door. The room was hot and airless, smelled of sweat. In the darkness, he dropped his hand down to me and waited. I couldn’t help myself, I reached up and held it. Noticed my fingertips were numb. We’ll be OK, I remember thinking. Whatever we are, we’ll be OK. We didn’t see each other for a while back in Oxford. We both suffered, I know we did, but differently. And sometimes, when the day loomed gray, I’d sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on the stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible./

the ridge of fine blond hairs above the coccyx. A puff of breeze came off the sea. The tiny field of hairs bent gently. The dragon-fly darted nervously sideways and hung above the man’s left shoulder, looking down. The young grass below the man’s open mouth stirred. A large drop of sweat rolled down the side of the fleshy nose and dropped glittering into the grass. That was enough. The dragon-fly flashed away through the roses and over the jagged glass on top of the high garden wall. It might be good food, but it moved. The garden in which the man lay was about an acre of well-kept lawn surrounded on three sides by thickly banked rose bushes from which came the steady murmur of bees. Behind the drowsy noise of the bees the sea boomed softly at the bottom of the cliff at the end of the garden. There was no view of the sea from the garden –no view of anything except of the sky and the clouds above the twelve-foot wall. In fact you could only see out of the property from the two upstairs bedrooms of the villa that formed the fourth side of this very

The familiar passion was there: he couldn’t feel his tongue and there was a numb spot on the point of his chin. But Gable’s face kept intruding. Now his resolve to stay professional, for her sake as well as his, was also for the memory of Gable. She straightened, brought her legs up and hugged her knees, and blinked at him again. Dominika saw the pulsing purple halo around his head and shoulders, and was worried that he had changed, that he was tired of her intransigence, or that his disciplinary troubles had finally oxidized his love for her. She had not changed her view that, despite the senior CIA men’s protestations, their love affair was acceptable, something that sustained her, a justifiable departure from the rules of tradecraft and agent handling. Bozhe, God, she wanted him. The expectation of being with him had grown when she had boosted herself over the wall of the villa this morning. The Sparrow tagline No. 99, “A whistling samovar never boils over,” came to mind. But the decorous Russian in her would not be so nekulturny, so base as to stand up in front of him now, shrug the spaghetti straps off her shoulders, and step out of her dress. She would not push him back on the couch, with her hands on his chest, and trail her breasts across his face. No, she wouldn’t. They looked at each other shakily through the midday light.

So many things had gone well for me since I'd come to Baiae from Maximus's villa in Pompeii. Apicius increasingly turned to me for advice on his affairs, even outside the kitchen. Aelia and Apicata had become as close as family. The kitchen slaves respected me and worked hard to gain both my favor and Apicius's. My love for Passia had bloomed in the sun of this festive town. Truly, I thought, I had found a form of Elysium here in Baiae, made all the more sweet by the fact that at any time it could have been swept away-

There’s a note in there,” Paolo said, gesturing at the bundle. “I’m sure he’d rather you hear from him, not me.” He bowed slightly, his inky black hair falling forward to obscure part of his face. “Buona notte, Signorina Cassandra.” With that, he turned away, disappearing into the darkness in just a few long strides. Cass re-bolted the door. Her heart was still beating hard. She looked down at the wrapped square. It was about two feet by two feet and as thick as her wrist. Lighting a candle, she laid the bundle on the long wobbly table where the servants prepared food for the villa and took their own meals. She held her breath as she tugged at the coarse twine wrapped around the package. The muslin unfolded in layers, revealing a canvas beneath. A folded scrap of parchment fluttered to the kitchen floor. Cass barely noticed it. She was too busy staring at the painting. There she was on the divan in Tommaso’s studio. Just a couple of weeks had elapsed between now and then, but already it felt like years, like the dream of a different lifetime. Falco had captured her tiniest quirks on the canvas: the smattering of freckles across her cheeks, the unruly piece of hair behind her left ear that worked its way out of any arrangement. And her smile--Cass almost couldn’t believe it was real. She looked radiant, like she was experiencing true happiness for the first time. She remembered Falco’s soft touches as he posed her, how delirious she’d been each time his fingers grazed her skin. She remembered how excited she was at being alone with him, the endless possibilities, the countless dangers. Cass wished she could dive into the painting and go back to that night where she had felt love for the first time.

The guard can go to the Rialto and tell the rettori. The councilmen look into crimes such as this. They could send an avogadore to investigate.” Falco spun around to face her again. “Who is she? You don’t know. Who killed her? You don’t know. Even if the guard stopped drinking and playing dice long enough to row over to tell the rettori, I doubt the magistrate will be concerned. They only care about crimes that upset the merchants or that scare away tourists. They won’t care about a robbed tomb out here on San Domenico, or about the murder of an unknown courtesan.” “Maybe you’re afraid they’ll think you killed her.” Cass lifted her chin, forcing herself to meet Falco’s eyes, searching them for signs of evil. She saw none. And yet, there had to be a reason he was so opposed to reporting a murder. Falco folded his arms. “And what will they think about you, trolling the graveyard, unchaperoned, with a stranger? A commoner, no less. What will your parents say when the soldiers drag you home? Won’t they be shocked to find out what late-night company their lovely daughter has been keeping?” “My parents are dead,” Cass said simply. She didn’t say it to make him feel guilty. It just came out of her mouth instinctively. She’d probably said it a hundred times, so often that the words themselves felt dead to her, meaningless. Falco softened. “Your guardians, then. They won’t believe that we weren’t…” He trailed off. “It’ll be the talk of the city by daybreak.” He reached out and stroked her hair. “Fun thought, though, eh? A girl like you with me?” His soft touch made Cass warm and cold at the same time. He was right. Aunt Agnese would lock Cass inside the villa if she found out where Cass had spent the evening. And if she found out Cass was consorting with a commoner? Well, that would be very bad, possibly exiled-to-a-nunnery-in-Spain bad.

I will not just forget the body of a friend--a contessa, I might point out--that vanished into the night. And it’s easy for you to say he won’t hurt us. No one’s left you any deranged love notes.” She turned to head back to the villa. Falco grabbed her shoulder. “Hold on,” he said. His strength surprised Cass. She tucked her right hand inside her cloak pocket, and her fingers closed around the handle of the small knife. “Let me go,” she said, “or I’ll scream.” Falco released her. “Please, not that again. My head still hurts from last time.” He flashed a half smile. “Look, I understand why you’re scared. And I understand why you think you’ll feel better if you go to the guard, but they won’t help you.” “So your plan is just for me to stay here with my aunt and wait to be murdered? You do realize you’ll probably be next on the list, don’t you?” “Yes, yes,” Falco said wryly. “I’m not thrilled about the idea of being stalked by a killer, either.

His book For Whom the Bell Tolls was an instant success in the summer of 1940, and afforded him the means to live in style at his villa outside of Havana with his new wife Mary Welsh, whom he married in 1946. It was during this period that he started getting headaches and gaining weight, frequently becoming depressed. Being able to shake off his problems, he wrote a series of books on the Land, Air and Sea, and later wrote The Old Man and the Sea for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1954. Hemingway on a trip to Africa where he barely survived two successive airplane crashes. Returning to Cuba, Ernest worked reshaping the recovered work and wrote his memoir, A Moveable Feast. He also finished True at First Light and The Garden of Eden. Being security conscious, he stored his works in a safe deposit box at a bank in Havana. His home Finca Vigía had become a hub for friends and even visiting tourists. It was reliably disclosed to me that he frequently enjoyed swinger’s parties and orgies at his Cuban home. In Spain after divorcing Frank Sinatra Hemingway introduced Ava Gardner to many of the bullfighters he knew and in a free for all, she seduced many of hotter ones. After Ava Gardner’s affair with the famous Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín crashed, she came to Cuba and stayed at Finca Vigía, where she had what was termed to be a poignant relationship with Ernest. Ava Gardner swam nude in the pool, located down the slope from the Hemingway house, after which he told his staff that the water was not to be emptied. An intimate friendship grew between Hemingway’s forth and second wife, Mary and Pauline. Pauline often came to Finca Vigia, in the early 1950s, and likewise Mary made the crossing of the Florida Straits, back to Key West several times. The ex-wife and the current wife enjoyed gossiping about their prior husbands and lovers and had choice words regarding Ernest. In 1959, Hemingway was in Cuba during the revolution, and was delighted that Batista, who owned the nearby property, that later became the location of the dismal Pan Americana Housing Development, was overthrown. He shared the love of fishing with Fidel Castro and remained on good terms with him. Reading the tea leaves, he decided to leave Cuba after hearing that Fidel wanted to nationalize the properties owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. In the summer of 1960, while working on a manuscript for Life magazine, Hemingway developed dementia becoming disorganized and confused. His eyesight had been failing and he became despondent and depressed. On July 25, 1960, he and his wife Mary left Cuba for the last time. He never retrieved his books or the manuscripts that he left in the bank vault. Following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban government took ownership of his home and the works he left behind, including an estimated 5,000 books from his personal library. After years of neglect, his home, which was designed by the Spanish architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer in 1886, has now been largely restored as the Hemingway Museum. The museum, overlooking San Francisco de Paula, as well as the Straits of Florida in the distance, houses much of his work as well as his boat housed near his pool.

How about another villa … Like that one.” He points to the villa next door. “You don’t like this one?” Roberto asks, crushed. “Oh, we love this one,” Ace starts to say. “But is there one with two beds?” Roberto looks at Ace and then me and then back at Ace again. “She snores.” And my mouth goes wide in shock. “He squeals like a pig when we have sex, so I don’t want to bother the neighbours.

Heavens, was there ever a greater fool than a woman in love with a man who cared nothing for her?

The logic of limitless probability.

In a villa in Ephesus, forty-six children were lying clean and bathed in comfortable beds. Although their life had been terrible, it had held a sort of routine. Now everything had changed. The change had given them hope. And with hope came fear that their hope might be in vain. Then the music began, lyre and flute blending together, rising up from the courtyard below and filling the rooms with a wordless song of comfort. The children had never heard such music before. It took them from their dark places and transported them to sun-dappled glades, with warm sunshine, cool breezes and birdsong. The notes were like a mother’s fingers, gently brushing the hair from the forehead, soft and infinitely loving. And soon all the children were asleep.

In the palm tree courtyard of the Villa Vinea, Nubia finished telling Aristo about her adventures in North Africa and Egypt. ‘Amazing,’ he kept saying. ‘That’s amazing.’ The jasmine-scented courtyard was dimly lit by bronze hanging lamps, some of them were reflected in the mirror smooth pool beside them. The silver light of the rising moon illuminated the tops of the four palm trees. ‘Tomorrow,’ said Aristo softly, ‘I am going to gather all the children together and begin to teach them. It’s what I know how to do, and it will keep them busy and occupied. Do you think that’s a good idea?’ ‘Yes,’ said Nubia. ‘That is a very good idea. You are a wonderful teacher, Aristo.’ The air was filled with the scent of jasmine, but as he moved a little closer she caught a subtle whiff of his musky lavender scent. It made her dizzy. ‘Nubia,’ he said softly. ‘I want to tell you something.’ The tone of his voice made her heart begin to pound. ‘Something you said a few days ago . . . about being old enough for love . . . For a long time I thought . . . But then Flavia said . . . and I couldn’t bear to think . . . I’ve been such a fool . . .’ Nubia couldn’t understand what he was saying. So she willed the pulsing roar in her ears to be quiet and when it was, she heard him say: ‘I loved Miriam so much!’ Nubia felt sick. How could she compete with the most beautiful girl in the Roman Empire? A girl whose beauty would never fade or grow wrinkled? She had been right not to tell Aristo her feelings. He would laugh at her. Or despise her. Or worst of all: pity her. In the darkness she felt him take her hand in his. The shock of his touch was so powerful that she almost cried out. ‘You’re trembling again,’ he said. ‘Are you cold?’ ‘No,’ she whispered. She wanted to cry out: Why do you still love Miriam? She never loved you. But I do. I will always love you. But she knew it would be the worst thing she could do. So instead she snatched her hand from his and ran upstairs and groped her way along the dim corridor to the bedroom and threw herself onto the bed. And in the lonely darkness, she wept.

And the words ANDER & SANTI WERE HERE are written along the top. Big and bright and bold. Wanting the world to know that we gave it our best and that that has meaning. That we loved here, and no one and no amount of hate can ever erase that.

I didn't even try to love, it just happened.

Pliny the Elder wrote once: “If anyone will consider the abundance of Rome’s public supply of water, for baths, cisterns, ditches, houses, gardens, villas; and take into account the distance over which it travels, the arches reared, the mountains pierced, the valleys spanned—he will admit that there never was anything more marvelous in the whole world.

Voi mi capite. Era come se lì, seduto contro il poggiaschiena di quella panchina, lui ci fosse già stato, come se Aidi l’avesse già conosciuta. Tra le pieghe della memoria, nelle videocassette d’archivio della scuola elementare, gli sembrava ci fosse qualcosa di lei: Villa Spada, dove andava a giocare con la divisa da lupetto; i pranzi dagli zii a Casalecchio, la domenica; la renault blu che il Cancelliere aveva comprato quando lui aveva sei anni; lo specchio del bagno, alonato di condensa, su cui il frère de lait aveva scritto col dito «W Inter»; e poi certi riff distorti di Fender Jaguar nella memoria… Ebbene, c’era qualcosa di lei, in tutto questo, e il vecchio Alex riusciva a essere più che simpatico e più che naturale, ma senza calcolo, e insomma ne era quasi sicuro, adesso: gli sembrava di conoscere Aidi da sempre, poiché quando si dice il sentimento, ragazzi.

In deze periode was Grünewald werkelijk alleenheerser, en alle levenden en doden verloren met de dag veld in het hart van Louise.

When you really love your work, you don’t need an alarm clock in the morning because you can’t wait to get out of bed and dive into another day where the work feels like play.

I will always find a way.

The Beach View Hotel is the perfect place to experience the warm sun and white sandy beaches. Villa Krish in the Pondicherry is the hotel nearby beach, where you can enjoy the lovely view of nature.

Laughing with blood relatives amidst memorable melodies in the background, styrofoam plate in hand, topped with foods that restaurants can’t duplicate, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Staring at an unbelievable sunrise from a balcony villa in Tanzania, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Recognized and awarded for notable news journalism, a few semesters away from achieving a prestigious degree decorated with promised opportunities, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Hoping quietly for the best, to “win my husband over” with traditional submission, more frequent sex, and minimized speech, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Walking down a dusty Egyptian street filled with the welcoming laughter of carefree children, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Sitting in a church pew notating another good message, clapping to some of my favorite songs, and then exiting to talk with familiar faces, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Communing with those who know who the “real chosen” are, beholding their unknown names unmasked, and secret knowledges revealed to ponder incessantly, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Placed underneath the wanting body of a rare man who showed me unprecedented love, it hit me: I don’t belong here. My soul. My mind. My body. Each malnourished. My community. My life purpose. Both misplaced. All starving for home. So, I moved. Not to what looks and feels good for them, but to what

Laughing with blood relatives amidst memorable melodies in the background, styrofoam plate in hand, topped with foods that restaurants can’t duplicate, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Staring at an unbelievable sunrise from a balcony villa in Tanzania, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Recognized and awarded for notable news journalism, a few semesters away from achieving a prestigious degree decorated with promised opportunities, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Hoping quietly for the best, to “win my husband over” with traditional submission, more frequent sex, and minimized speech, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Walking down a dusty Egyptian street filled with the welcoming laughter of carefree children, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Sitting in a church pew notating another good message, clapping to some of my favorite songs, and then exiting to talk with familiar faces, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Communing with those who know who the “real chosen” are, beholding their unknown names unmasked, and secret knowledges revealed to ponder incessantly, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Placed underneath the wanting body of a rare man who showed me unprecedented love, it hit me: I don’t belong here. My soul. My mind. My body. Each malnourished. My community. My life purpose. Both misplaced. All starving for home. So, I moved. Not to what looks and feels good for them, but to what

Laughing with blood relatives amidst memorable melodies in the background, styrofoam plate in hand, topped with foods that restaurants can’t duplicate, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Staring at an unbelievable sunrise from a balcony villa in Tanzania, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Hoping quietly for the best, to “win my husband over” with traditional submission, more frequent sex, and minimized speech, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Walking down a dusty Egyptian street filled with the welcoming laughter of carefree children, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Sitting in a church pew notating another good message, clapping to some of my favorite songs, and then exiting to talk with familiar faces, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Communing with those who know who the “real chosen” are, beholding their unknown names unmasked, and secret knowledges revealed to ponder incessantly, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Placed underneath the wanting body of a rare man who showed me unprecedented love, it hit me: I don’t belong here. My soul. My mind. My body. Each malnourished. My community. My life purpose. Both misplaced. All starving for home. So, I moved. Not to what looks and feels good for them, but to what

I should be comforting Illa for her first heartbreak, I should've been stronger, set a better example, I should have confronted Eliza from the start, told James the truth about my feelings. But one thing I shouldn't have done was let fear and my self-guilt control everything I did. I was always scared of people leaving so I held on too tightly, allowing myself to suffer through pains that I never deserved instead of standing up for my own feelings. I wanted so badly for my relationships to work out that I let people hurt me. Over and over again. Love at the expense of losing myself. Losing my own voice.

Offering some of Finland's finest beaches, genteel Hanko, the country's southernmost town, has a history intimately connected with Russia. The St Petersburg gentry for whom it was a favoured summering destination have left a noble legacy of lovely wooden villas, while the area saw heavy fighting in WWII when it was occupied by Russia and locals were forced to evacuate. Today the long sandy peninsula is all about yachts and sand castles, rather than gunboats and trenches, and makes a great place to relax.

No!” she cried impatiently. “I shall never see him again, I know that, but there will be someone, somewhere… a man who makes me feel alive, truly alive in that magical way, and with whom there is the possibility of love… and I cannot settle for less. I cannot.

Cannes was thought of as a playground for the rich; a city of lovely villas and gardens, a paradise of fashionable elegance. Few stopped to realize what a mass of labor was required to maintain that cleanliness and charm: not merely the servants who dwelt on the estates, but porters and truckdrivers, scrubwomen and chambermaids, kitchen-workers, food-handlers; and scores of obscure occupations which the rich never heard about. These people were housed in slum warrens,

His uncle was angry with him because of the manner in which he had thrown away the good position of telegraph operator in Villa de Leyva, but he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

Che worship amongst Mexicans, however, features a few more wrinkles than the usual caudillismo causes. Guevara, for one, was an emigrant—left Argentina for revolution—who remade his life in Mexico when he met Fidel Castro. He died young, like all good Mexican men. Che was a romantic—can’t tell you how many pro-immigrant-activist e-mails end with Guevara’s supposed quote “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” More important, Guevara wasn’t afraid to use violence as a method in the pursuit of his love, the love that dare not speak its name except through the barrel of a gun. Don’t believe Chicanos: while César Chávez advocated nonviolence, Mexicans like their leaders armed to the gold teeth—think Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Subcomandante Marcos. And now you know why democracy has never existed in Mexico.

She smiled, thinking of the way she’d proudly wear her kid-sized toolbelt, following him around. She had to wonder if he was still out there somewhere, tiling bathrooms himself. If he missed having her as his little helper. He’d always loved his job and the houses he worked on, so much.

Gladys loved Mama's red devil cake with chocolate icing, but what I always begged her to fix for my birthday was her rich hummingbird cake with pineapple and bananas and pecans and a real sweet cream cheese icing. Daddy adored that cake too, and I can still hear him telling me before he'd go to work to be sure and cut him a thick slice and wrap it in plastic and put it in the fridge for him. To this day, I don't know how the cake got its crazy name, and when I finally asked Mama not long ago if she knew, all she did was twist her mouth and frown the way she does when she's exasperated, and tell me not to ask dumb questions, then say, "maybe it's because hummingbirds love red sugar water and the nectar in flowers and anything else sweet. But I can tell you one thing, and that's that I'm not about to put a cake outside to see if hummingbirds'll peck at it.

Well, I was sure this handsome buck would follow us both out, but when I got back to the kitchen, there he still was picking at some leftover Cajun popcorn in a bowl on the counter. "Oh, don't eat that!" I almost screamed. "It's awful cold. And, besides, you need to dip it in garlic mayonnaise for it to be really good." "I think it's pretty good as is," he said, and suddenly I began to wonder if maybe I looked too heavy in the loose harlequin pants and metallic gold shirt I was wearing. "What's it called?" "Cajun popcorn." "But it's fried shrimp, isn't it?" "Yeah, though over in Louisiana they usually use crawfish." "Why's it called popcorn?" "I have no earthly idea. Maybe 'cause people it fast as popcorn." "What all's in it?" I was now rinsing and drying some platters with a dishcloth and in a hurry to put out some more nutty fingers. "You do ask a lot of questions, Mr. Webster," I kidded him. "Sure you're not some hotshot chef out looking to steal recipes?" He laughed and said, "Jerry. Call me Jerry. And no, I'm no recipe thief. I simply love good food and am always looking for new ideas." "Okay, Jerry, there's everything in that battered popcorn except the kitchen stove." "Like what?" he kept on. "Like garlic and onion and a few hundred herbs and spices- and lots of love." He smiled and asked, "Deep fried?" "Yep, in peanut oil, but not too long- no more than about two minutes. Gotta be crisp on the outside but not overcooked.

At first, I planned to do just a big pot of son-of-a-bitch stew with coleslaw and cornbread, but when I thought about dogs running around the house and thirteen people trying to deal with bowls of soupy stew sloshing all over the place, I realized the idea was stupid. Then I remembered an extra turkey breast in the fridge I'd roasted as backup for a bank cocktail buffet but didn't need, as well as half a baked ham shank I'd kept to make sandwiches and nibble on. Wham! It dawned on me: a sumptuous turkey and ham casserole with mushrooms and cheese and water chestnuts and sherry. The perfect bereavement dish. And with that I could do my baked cheese grits, and my congealed pickled peach and pecan salad, and some buttermilk biscuits, and maybe a simple bowl of ambrosia and some cookies. Everything but the grits and biscuits done in advance, easy to serve and eat, no mess, and who doesn't love a great casserole and grits and congealed salad?

Short story: The true and incredible tale of David Kirkpatrick, a Scottish ex-boy scout, and miner, serving in WW2 with 2nd Highland Light Infantry and the legendary elite corps 2nd SAS. A man who becomes a hero playing his bagpipe during a secret mission in Italy, March 1945, where he saved the lives of hundreds just playing during the attack. After he fought in North Africa, Greece, Albania, Sicily and being reported as an unruly soldier, (often drunk, insulting superiors and so on) in Tuscany, 23 march 1945 he joined as volunteer in the 2nd Special Air Service ( the British elite forces), for a secret mission behind enemy line in Italy. He parachuted in the Italian Apennines with his kilt on (so he becomes known as the 'mad piper' ) for a mission organized with British elite forces and an unruly group of Italian-Russian partisans (code name: 'Operation Tombola' organized from the British secret service SOE and 2nd SAS and the "Allied Battalion") against the Gothic Line german headquarter of the 51 German Mountains Corps in Albinea, Italy. The target of the anglo-partisan group's mission is to destroy the nazi HQ to prepare the big attack of the Allied Forces (US 5th Army, British 8th Army) to the German Gothic Line in North Italy at the beginning of April. It's the beginning of the liberation of Italy from the nazi fascist dictatorship. The Allied Battalion guided by major Roy Farran, captain Mike Lees Italian partisan Glauco Monducci, Gianni Ferrari, and the Russian Viktor Pirogov is an unruly brigade of great fighters of many nationalities. Among them also not just British, Italian, and Russian but also a dutch, a greek, one Austrian paratrooper who deserted the German Forces after has killed an SS, a german who deserted Hitler's Army being in love with an Italian taffeta's, two Jewish escaped from nazi reprisal and 3 Spanish anti-Franchise who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War and then joined first the French Foreign Legion and the British Elite Forces. The day before the attack, Kirkpatrick is secretly guested in a house of Italian farmers, and he donated his white silk parachute to a lady so she could create her wedding dress for the Wedding with his love: an Italian partisan. During the terrible attack in the night of 27th March 1945, the sound of his bagpipe marks the beginning of the fight and tricked the nazi, avoiding a terrible reprisal against the civilian population of the Italian village of Albinea, saving in this way the life of hundreds The German HQ based in two historical villa's is destroyed and in flames, several enemy soldiers are killed, during the attack, the bagpipe of David played for more than 30 minutes and let the german believe that the "British are here", not also Italian and Russian partisan (in war for Hitler' order: for partisans attack to german forces for every german killed nazi were executing 10 local civilians in terrible and barbarian reprisal). During the night the bagpipe of David is also hit after 30 minutes of the fight and, three British soldiers of 2nd SAS are killed in the action in one of the two Villa. The morning later when Germans bring their bodies to the Church of Albinea, don Alberto Ugolotti, the local priest notes in his diary: "Asked if they were organizing a reprisal against the civilian population, they answered that it was a "military attack" and there would.

We emerge into the warm night air and I smell the honeyed wisteria, hear an owl hooting across the fields on the far side of the river. I’m eager to dive in; I love to swim. I’m picking my way down the little slope when, behind me, I hear a commotion, and look back to see Paige braced between Evan and Leo; she’s tripped on her wedge heels and is cackling like a banshee. Kendra looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Hopefully the cold water’ll sober her up a bit,” she says resignedly. I don’t answer, even though I completely agree. Because, leaning against the wall of the club on our left, long legs crossed at the ankles, shoulders propped square to the stone, black hair falling over his face, is a silhouette that looks eerily familiar, like a ghost that haunts my dreams. There’s a book called The Beautiful and Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, that I found in the villa’s library, and I’ve been reading it. I don’t quite understand it all; to be honest, I pulled it off the shelf because the title spoke to me, made me think of him. Luca. Definitely beautiful, and the damned part fits too, because he’s so dark, so brooding, so sad; it feels sometimes as if he doesn’t want to reach for happiness, as if he actually pushes it away-- But he saved me when I saw in danger, I remind myself. He saved my life. And then he told me he thought I might be his half sister. Which meant we couldn’t see each other anymore, in case that was true… A red dot flashes in the blue-black night as the figure raises a cigarette to his lips. It can’t be Luca, I tell myself. We’re beyond Siena, miles and miles from Chianti, where he lives. It can’t be him. Everyone’s already passed me, brushing by as I stopped to stare at the lean boy draped against the roadhouse wall. “Violet!” Kelly calls, her voice high and thrilled. “Come on! Wait till you see this!” I turn back toward the river and plunge down the little path as if I were being chased by the hounds of hell. Away from a silhouette that’s making me think of things--want things--that I can never have.

Where, she wondered, would all her love go?

The pages of history go silent. But the stones of Athens provide a small coda to the story of the seven philosophers. It is clear, from the archaeological evidence, that the grand villa on the slopes of the Acropolis was confiscated not long after the philosophers left. It is also clear that it was given to a new Christian owner. Whoever this Christian was, they had little time for the ancient art that filled the house. The beautiful pool was turned into a baptistery. The statues above it were evidently considered intolerable: the finely wrought images of Zeus, Apollo and Pan were hacked away. Mutilated stumps are now all that remain of the faces of the gods; ugly and incongruous above the still-delicate bodies. The statues were tossed into the well. The mosaic on the floor of the dining room fared little better. Its great central panel, which had contained another pagan scene, was roughly removed. A crude cross pattern, of vastly inferior workmanship, was laid in its place. The lovely statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, suffered as badly as the statue of Athena in Palmyra had. Not only was she beheaded she was then, a final humiliation, placed face down in the corner of a courtyard to be used as a step. Over the coming years, her back would be worn away as the goddess of wisdom was ground down by generations of Christian feet. The ‘triumph’ of Christianity was complete.

It’s funny – you can have a difficult relationship with your mother but still want to see her, still need to, in fact. Love was hardly if ever straightforward, and it was love, at the heart of it.

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man of forty-five can consider himself still young till the moment comes when he realises that he has children old enough to fall in love. The Prince felt old age come over him in one blow; he forgot the huge distances still tramped out shooting, the Gesummaria he could still evoke from his wife, his freshness now at the end of a long and arduous journey. Suddenly he saw himself as a white-haired old man walking beside herds of grandchildren on billy-goats in the public gardens of Villa Giulia.

His attitude towards her changed. When they had been settled for less than a month at La Fiorita, as their villa was called, they were sitting out one night in the belvedere at the end of their pergola watching the full moon climb above the mountains of Sorrento. The night was not chilly; but fearing that Willoughby might take cold, she came down the garden with an Alpine cloak that she had bought for him in Munich. She found him rapt, gazing at the snaky track of yellow moonlight on the water. Even before he spoke she was aware of something tense and emotional in the air; but when she threw the cloak over his shoulders he did not thank her as usual. He stood gazing down at her with a look in his eyes that she had never seen before except when he was playing. She felt herself blushing beneath his gaze. Then, clasping her in his arms, he kissed her lips. It was the kiss of a lover, the like of which she had never known before, and she, with her curious, spinsterly instinct, shrank from it. “What are you doing?” he cried. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t I kiss you?” “Julian, you’re so rough. I don’t understand kisses like that.” “Aren’t you my wife?” he said. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t love you?

I've got to have wheels," Theo called after him, and swore under his breath as he heard his father walk down the stairs. "You might as well be dead out here without wheels." He flopped back on the bed to brood up at the ceiling. Maddy just shook her head. "You're such a moron, Theo." "You're so ugly, Maddy." "You're never going to get a car if you nag him. If I help you get a car, you have to drive me to the mall twelve times, without being mean about it." "How are you going to help me get a car, you little geek?" But he was already considering. She almost always got what she wanted. She sauntered into the room, made herself at home. "First the deal. Then we discuss

She sighed and put on a good sulk. Actually, she had no desire to get her nose pierced but she did want a third piercing in her left earlobe. Working down to it, or over to it, from the nose was good strategy. The kind, she thought, her father would appreciate if he knew about it. "It's my body." "Not until you're eighteen, it's not. Until that happy day, it's mine. Go nag your brother." "I can't. I'm not speaking to him." She rolled onto her back on her father's

He paused by Theo's door, knocked with his free hand. "Get lost, creep." David looked down at Maddy. "I assume he means you." He

We dragged Linc along. His current honey is working tonight." "Still the intern?" "Yeah." Helen sat on the curvy velvet chaise, made herself at home. "I'm starting to think he's getting serious about her." "And?" "I don't know. She's a nice girl, raised well. Focused, which he could use, and independent, which I appreciate." "But he's your baby." "But he's my baby," Helen agreed. "I miss the little boy sometimes, with the scabbed knees and loose shoelaces. Still see him in that tall, gorgeous lawyer in the three-piece suit that strolls in and out of my life now. And Jesus,

God, I love men." She got up from the desk, walked to him, cupped his face in her hands and gave him a smacking kiss on the mouth. "You're just so cute." One hard tug on her hand had her tumbling into his lap. An instant later her quick laugh was cut off, and her heart pounding. He hadn't kissed her this way before, with impatience and heat and hunger all mixed together in a near brutal assault. He hadn't kissed her as if he couldn't get enough. Would never get en

Fair enough." She lowered her knees, stared down as she buttoned her shirt again. "Ty, I'm really sorry. I'd never do anything to upset Eli, or to cause trouble between the two of you." "I know." He pushed to his feet and after a brief hesitation held out his hand to help her up. "I want to make love with you." His already jangled system suffered. "I think what we both want's pretty clear. I just don't know what we're going to do about it. I have to go after him." "Yes.

We've got this heat going on, that's all. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not go into that end of things." "Oh, it's all the same to me. You're both adults and you got two working brains between you. Both of you were raised right, so what you do is your own business. Next time, though, lock the damn door first.

I was into third guesses with Theo and Maddy. Anyway, that's one of the reasons I opted to buy the van and drive cross-country instead of dumping us all in a plane. It gave us some time. Nothing like a three-thousand-mile drive in an enclosed vehicle to cement a family unit—if you live through it." "It was very brave of you." "You want to talk courage?" He drove easily up the lane to the villa. "I've been chief taste-tester on this wine experiment Maddy's conducting. It's brut

We got distracted. Ty said I could come to the tasting." "Maddy—" "Please. He's going to put my wine in." David glanced over. "You're a brave man, MacMillan." "You never spent an evening chugging any Run, Walk and Fall Down?" With a grin, David covered Maddy's ears. "Once or twice, and fortunately I lived to regret it. Your wine club might object to the addition." "Yeah." The thought of that tickled Ty, too. "It'll broaden their outlook." "Or poison them." "Please, Dad. It's for science.