But his face is wreathed with smiles, for he genuinely loves his two beautiful nieces, Lucrezia, Duchess of Urbino, and the gentle Leonora, who are his guests, and he loves his villa, whose beauties he is pointing out to them. "You do not see the garden at its best," he cavils. "Wait till the roses garland the balustrades. It is too early yet to enjoy Tivoli; the frost may have left the ground but it lingers still in the pavements of this great palace. The halls are damp as vaults; we would have done well, my nieces, to have remained another month in Rome. Not till the middle of May will society desert the city for its _villeggiatura_. What do you say, Leonora, shall we confess that we have made a mistake and return?" "Dear uncle, as you say, it is only the palace which, in spite of its braziers, retains the winter chill. Here in the garden the air is balmy, and the Judas trees are all a crimson mist. See how the green is creeping, like an inundation through the russets of last year's grasses. In another fortnight all this magical change will have been wrought, and those who come later will have missed the fairy spectacle." "Spectacle! ah! that reminds me," replied the Cardinal; "while Nature is shifting the scenes we must prepare the _scenario_. Confess that I have provided a worthy theatre, one which should suggest to a poet a worthy theme. There, alas! is my great lack--I have no poet. How wastefully on those who need them not are the most precious gifts bestowed! My uncle and godfather, Cardinal Ippolito--the saints rest his soul!--was a dull-brained barbarian and yet he had attached to his service that pearl of poets Ariosto, whom he had neither the intelligence to appreciate nor the justice to reward. What think you was Ariosto's meed for dedicating to his patron the _Orlando Furioso_? He was made governor of that nest of bandits, the mountain district of Garfagnana, and it in open insurrection against the Duke of Ferrara. A pretty post for a scholar and a poet! But to it he went, and conquered the brigands, proving himself as expert in the use of the sword as in that of the pen. "We produce no such men now. Bernardo Tasso, to whom I gave employment when he was exiled from Naples, and who wandered freely in this garden, felt not its charm, for he was but a third-rate poet, and even he is dead. Who in our day can interpret the poetry which I feel here but cannot express? And with but so little more of endowment I might have done it, for after all is not the inner ear, the second sight, the major part of genius?