The avenue led round to the back of the villa, and as I now entered it, I thought I would approach the house cautiously by this means and get private speech with Assunta, the nurse who had charge of little Stella, and who was moreover an old and tried family servant, in whose arms my mother had breathed her last.
The dark trees rustled solemnly as I stepped quickly yet softly along the familiar moss-grown path.

The place was very still--sometimes the nightingales broke into a bubbling torrent of melody, and then were suddenly silent, as though overawed by the shadows of the heavy interlacing boughs, through which the moonlight flickered, casting strange and fantastic patterns on the ground.

A cloud of lucciole broke from a thicket of laurel, and sparkled in the air like gems loosened from a queen's crown.

Faint odors floated about me, shaken from orange boughs and trailing branches of white jasmine.

I hastened on, my spirits rising higher the nearer I approached my destination.