In Château Land

You will be surprised, dear Margaret, to have a letter from me here instead of from
Touraine. We fully intended to go directly from the Dolomites and Venice to Milan and
on to Tours, stopping a day or two in Paris en route, but Miss Cassandra begged for a
few days on Lake Como, as in all her travels by sea and shore she has never seen the
Italian lakes. We changed our itinerary simply to be obliging, but Walter and I have had
no reason to regret the change for one minute.
Beautiful as you and I found this region in June, I must admit that its August charms are
more entrancing and pervasive. Instead of the clear blues, greens and purples of June,
the light haze that veils the mountain tops brings out the same indescribable opalescent
shades of heliotrope, azure and rose that we thought belonged exclusively to the
Dolomites. However, these mountains are first cousins, once or twice removed, to the
Eastern Italian and Austrian Alps and have a good right to a family likeness. There is
something almost intoxicating in the ethereal beauty of this lake, something that goes to
one's head like wine. I don't wonder that poets and artists rave about its charms, of
which not the least is its infinite variety. The scene changes so quickly. The glow of color
fades, a cloud obscures the sun, the blue and purple turn to gray in an instant, and we
descend from a hillside garden, where gay flowers gain added brilliancy from the sun, to
a cypressbordered path where the grateful shade is so dense that we walk in twilight and
listen to the liquid note of the nightingale, or the blackcap, whose song is sometimes
mistaken for that of his more distinguished neighbor.