To Cyrille, with his political views, his poetic communism, and his genuine tenderness of temper, it was a daily torment to mark, track, and prevent the continual petty thefts and crooked intrigues of those forest-squatters. More than once he was on the point of writing to Adolfo Gandolfo, and begging him to tender his resignation to the old prince. But many reasons restrained him: in the first place, gratitude; in the second, that natural reluctance of every high-spirited man to confess himself beaten; besides this, there was always a feeling which had entered into him of affection for the trees and for the animals, and a great sense of repose in the dim green solitudes which closed in around his refuge. If he went away, in impatience and thanklessness, what could await him? Only the stifling life of cities, the sordid struggle of intellect with want. Where again if he left Le Selve would he see the light of morning on the snows of Soracte? Where again behold the evening’s gold gleam on the line of the sea by Ostia? Where smell the bourgeonning blossoms of the lime? Where stroke the velvet antlers of the deer? Where watch the nightingales pluck the small white moths off the pale azure discs of the succory? Where see the day decline in pomp behind the hoary boughs of oaks which as saplings saw the armies of Theodoric and of Constantine pass beneath their sapling shadows; the spell of Rome held him and the sorcery of Nature; of that Nature which is eternally young, yet allied with the greatest ages of the earth.