"I have been told that, in art and literature, they will atone for deficiency of natural talent. It may be so; some persons, at least, have been able to cajole their brains into believing this. However that may be, I do not think the rule can be extended into the domain of cookery. Good intentions--no. Nobody need attempt such an imposture on his stomach, an upright and uncompromising organ, which refuses to listen to nonsense. Or let them try the experiment. Gastritis will be the result of good intentions...." Mr. Heard stretched out his legs. He was beginning to feel at ease. He like this comely old man; he detected an abiding quality in his outlook and person. And he felt at home in these surroundings. There was an air of simplicity and refinement in that calm ground-floor chamber, with its subdued light filtering through windows that opened upon the courtyard, groined vaulting of noble proportions, stucco frieze stained with age to an ivory hue, and those other decorations which the Count, loyal to the traditions of old-world peasant architecture, had piously left unaltered--or, it may be, adapted to modern needs by touches so deft as not to reveal his own consummate artistry. Through the open door by which they had entered came breathings of warm wind laden with the suave odour of a tuft of Madonna lilies that grew, half neglected, in a shady corner. He had noticed them on his entry--how they stood in proud clusters, bending forward with mighty effort to reach the light. His eye strayed into the courtyard and moved about the green penumbra created by the fig tree's massy foliage; it glanced over fragments of statuary half buried under a riot of leaves and nodding flowers, and rested with complaisance upon the brickwork flooring of herring-bone pattern, coloured in a warm, velvety Indian-red. It was worn down here and there by tread of feet, and pleasantly marked with patches of emerald-green moss and amber-tinted streaks of light that played about its surface wherever the sunbeams could pierce the dense leafage overhead. From where he sat he could see the Locri Faun on its pedestal. The figure was drowned in twilight. It seemed to slumber. Meanwhile Andrea, looking uncommonly ceremonious in white tie and white cotton globes, was handing round the coffee. It was pronounced an unqualified success. "Absolutely harmonious," declared the bishop, who had no hesitation, after a critical sip or two, in extending his approval to a curiously flavoured liqueur of unknown ingredients. "From my little property on the mainland," the Count explained. "If it were a clear day I would take you up to my roof and show you the very site, although it is leagues and leagues away. But the south wind always casts a haze over the mainland at this time of day--a kind of veil."