The Charmed Garden

But the good Romans had no answer to make to Count Appiani. They,
indeed, would have the enjoyment, but it must cost them nothing--in vain
had they very much loved this garden, had taken great pleasure under its
shady trees; but when it became necessary to pay for these pleasures,
they found that they were not worth the cost, that they could very well
dispense with them.

The good Romans therefore turned away from this garden, which threatened
them with a tax, and sought other places of recreation; while old Count
Appiani sold his garden and the ruins of his villa to the rich stranger
who had offered him so considerable a sum for them. From that day
forward every thing in the garden had assumed a different appearance.
Masons, carpenters, and upholsterers had come and so improved the villa,
within and without, that it now made a stately and beautiful appearance
amid the dense foliage of the trees. It had been expensively and
splendidly furnished with every thing desirable for a rich man's
dwelling, and the upholsterers had enough to relate to the listening
Romans of the elegant magnificence now displayed in this formerly
pitiable villa. How gladly would the former promenaders now have
returned to this garden; how gladly would they now have revisited this
villa, which, with its deserted halls and its ragged and dirty tapestry,
had formerly seemed to them not worth looking at! But their return to it
was now rendered impossible; for on the same day in which the new owner
took possession of the garden, he had brought with him more than fifty
workmen, who had immediately commenced surrounding it with a high wall.