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These mountains close the valley to south-east, and seem as though they belonged to another and more celestial region. Soon the sunlight was gone, and moonrise came to close the day, as we rolled onward to Sarzana, through arundo donax and vine-girdled olive trees and villages, where contadini lounged upon the bridges.
The jest, however, soon appeared to become earnest; for when Albert and Franz again encountered the carriage with the contadini, the one who had thrown the violets to Albert, clapped her hands when she beheld them in his button-hole. "Bravo, bravo," said Franz; "things go wonderfully. Shall I leave you? Perhaps you would prefer being alone?"
The Romans themselves of the better class seldom suffer from it, and I cannot but think that with a little prudence it may be easily avoided. Those who are most attacked by it are the laborers and contadini on the Campagna; and how can it be otherwise with them? They sleep often on the bare ground, or on a little straw under a capanna just large enough to admit them on all-fours.
The most ancient church is, however, in the cemetery to the north, a simple nave with pointed windows. The little chapel illustrated, at a crossing of the ways, is characteristic of this part of Istria. The people still speak Venetian Italian, though there are a good many Slav contadini, brought from Dalmatia by the Grimani in 1628.
In the early morning, when the light is beginning to steal through the shutters, one hears the tinkling of a mule's bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and, if one runs to the window, may see the contadini, looking, in their sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, driving through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari.
Painted Sicilian carts are ranged upon their banks, with sets of harness, and the auctioneers, whose business it is to sell miscellaneous articles, household furniture, stuffs, clocks, ornaments, frequently descend into them, and mount a heap of stones to gain command of their gaping audience of contadini and the shrewder buyers from the towns.
The hedges are putting forth their leaves, the almond-trees are in full blossom, and in the vineyards the contadini are setting cane-poles and trimming the vines to run upon them. Here and there, along the slopes, the rude old plough of the Georgics, dragged by great gray oxen, turns up the rich loam, that "needs only to be tickled to laugh out in flowers and grain."
But the great impression remained and finally was exquisite. It was all purple wine, all art and song, and nobody a grain the worse. It was fireworks and conversation the former, in the piazzetta, were to come later; it was civilisation and amenity. I took in the greater picture, but I lost nothing else; and I talked with the contadini about antique sculpture.
Lean-visaged, swarthy men peered forth from the folds of shawls or from beneath shapeless caps of many colors; a pair of carabinieri idled past, a soldier in jaunty feathered hat posed before the contadini. Dogs, donkeys, fowls added their clamor to the high-pitched voices.
The room with its lumber; its confusion of glittering things; this old man frowning at her for no reason! For after all what had she done? Even the contadini they were rough often they couldn't read or write but they loved their grandchildren. As he caught her reference to the bronze Hermes, Melrose's face changed. He rose, stretching out a hand toward a bell on the table.
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