Up At The Villa

    The novel Up At The Villa by W Somerset Maugham is a love story set in early 1940, during Nazi occupation, of a sleepy Italian village in Florence. An aristocratic widow, Mary Panton has her future and wealth sealed upon the death of her abusive, womanizing, yet extremely wealthy husband, an Italian diplomat. In a short time, her heart and love is intrigued for an enigmatic Rowley Flint. An American with with a mysterious past. She falls for him but her aristocratic pride will or would not accept his advances.

Flint has truly fallen madly in love with her but soon realizes she has her nose stuck up to high to be associated with him. He deals with his un-requited love and begins to fall into a sense of sadness. As the novel continues, and skipping to the meat of the story, Mary Patton murders a man, after a one night stand, over a senseless and reckless mistake.

    Mary resorts to the only man that could help her with this conundrum, The American, Rowley Flint. He assess the situation. He knows all to well the ruthlessness of the Italian justice, the Nazi regime, and their desire to charge her with murder in order to seize her wealth. 

   Flint arrives at her villa and begins to arrange the murder scene making it very difficult for the authorities to see that she was the murderer.

   The cat and mouse game with police left little room for the love of Panton and Flint to ignite but it was evidently growing in passion. As the investigation begins, the shrewd authorities realize the scene and situation was staged and are set to arrest Mary Panton for murder. 

   Unbeknownst to Mary, If things began to progress unfavorable for Mary, Rowley secretly planted his own revolver in her bed room and arranged an alibi for her. As they closed in on Mary Panton, Rowley Flint went to the authorities and confessed to the murder. They didn't believe him. He told them where to look for his revolver and to ask a concierge (whom he paid handsomely) to say that he saw Rowley Flint leave the room after the gunshot on the night of the murder.

   Flint was arrested for the murder and Mary Panton was set free. Before boarding the train to leave Florence, Mary goes to the jail to visit Flint and asked why he did this for her. When she arrives at his cell, she discovers that Flint has been beaten within an inch of his life, and is awaiting execution. Mary looks at Flint to her own shame and asked Rowley Flint why? Why did you take the blame for what I did, why, why? Flints response to her was only four words, "because I love YOU."

    When You read John 3:16, you don't see that God loved the world; you discover that He...SO... loved the world. He so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. This is how God demonstrated His love for us: while we were the perpetrators, we were the guilty sinners, the blood was on our hands, we were the ones who deserved punishment and death; but instead, Christ DIED FOR US. 

This is LOVE...not that we loved God; maybe had our nose stuck up too high to even acknowledge God; not that any of us even cared about God of what His son did; HE LOVED US still...and sent His son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

   Our penalty as sinners; our judgment from the broken and fallen world we live in, is death; eternal separation from God. So one might ask, "why did God allow His son to die?" Because Jesus was God's sinless sacrificial lamb, who took the penalty of sin, death, and hell; all that WE deserve, and He died for us.

Why...Why...Why would He do that? Four words...Because I LOVE you! He conquered, defeated, and demolished our sin debt and then in three days... He rose from the grave and lives forevermore. And, because He lives...we too can live.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us...1 John 3:16 

JMT