United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With true Sicilian naivete the priest added: "He is growing rich! Beato lui! He for one will not need to go to your golden America. Is it true, Signore, that in America any one who wishes may be rich?" "Quite true," smiled the young man. "Even our beggars are rich." The priest wagged his head knowingly. "My mother's cousin, Alfio Amato, he is an American. You know him?" "I'm afraid not."
But now he was being important, he was playing the ceramella, into which no shepherd could pour such a volume of breath as he, from which none could bring such a volume of warm and lusty music. It was Sebastiano coming down from the top of Monte Amato to welcome the forestieri. The music grew louder, and presently a dog barked outside on the terrace. Lucrezia ran to the window.
She was jealous, doubly jealous. The monopolizing instinct of strong-natured and deeply affectionate women was fiercely alive in her. Always, no doubt, she had had it. Long ago, when first she was in Sicily alone, she had dreamed of a love in the South far away from the world. When she married she had carried her Mercury to the exquisite isolation of Monte Amato.
Often, while he ate, Artois turned his eyes towards the mountain of Capri, and each time that he did so he saw, beyond it and its circling sea, Sicily, Monte Amato, the dying lights on Etna, the evening star above its plume of smoke, the figure of a woman set in the shadow of her sorrow, yet almost terribly serene; and then another woman, sitting at a table, vehemently talking, then bowing down her head passionately as if in angry grief.
In that darkness Hermione was hidden, the Hermione who was a stranger to him, the Hermione into whose heart and soul he was no longer allowed to look. Upon Monte Amato at evening she had, very simply, showed him the truth of her great sorrow. Now he saw the face at the window, the falling blind. Between then and now what a gulf fixed! Vere came from the garden followed by Gaspare.
Segni, lib. i. p. 15, speaks clearly on the point, and says that the friar for this service to the city 'debbe esser messo tra buoni datori di leggi, e debbe essere amato e onorato da' Fiorentini non altrimenti che Numa dai Romani e Solone dagli Ateniesi e Licurgo da' Lacedemoni. The evil of the old system was that the Parlamento, which consisted of the citizens assembled in the Piazza, was exposed to intimidation, and had no proper initiative, while the Balia, or select body, to whom they then intrusted plenipotentiary authority, was always the faction for the moment uppermost.
"What is it? What do you want?" said the doctor, in a grumbling voice. "Is it another baby? Upon my word, these " "Signor Dottore, come down, come down instantly! The signore of Monte Amato, the signore of the Casa del Prete has had an accident. You must come at once. I will go to fetch a donkey." The doctor leaned farther out of the window. "An accident! What ?"
But Olimpia slept long where she fell, and next morning decided to garner her rage. "Amor che a null' amato amar perdona." Bellaroba, who pleased the Countess, for the same reasons, no doubt, did not please the Count. It is possible to be too demure, and very little good to have domestic charm if you shut the door upon the amateur.
Did it happen that you heard Caruso and Blanche Arral this winter in New York, Mr. Pathurst?" I nodded, still marvelling over this spate of speech at table. "Well, think of hearing them, and Homer, and Witherspoon, and Amato, every night for nights and nights at the Metropolitan; and then to give it the go-by, and get to sea and shake down to watch and watch." "You don't like the sea?" I queried.
And in his wonder he knew that the real dominance strikes its roots in the heart, not in the head. "You were strong, then, and you were strong, you were wonderfully strong, when afterwards. On Monte Amato that evening you were strong." His mind went to that mountain summit.
Word Of The Day