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From the roofs where they seem to live, from the high narrow windows, the warren of houses that would be hovels in the North, but here in the sun are picturesque, women look down lazily and cry out, with a shrillness peculiar to Genoa, to their friends in the street.
Of course, there is only one real remedy for this state of things, and that is to take the people away from the wretched hovels in which they sicken, suffer, and die, with less comfort and consideration than the cattle in the stalls and styes of many a country Squire.
You may not believe me, Dorsenne, but it is making me ill to be here.... I am reminded of the human toil, of the human soul in all these objects, and to end here, paid for how? Owned by whom? Close your eyes and think of Schroeder and of the others whom you do not know. Look into the hovels where there is neither furniture, fire, nor bread. Then, open your eyes and look at this."
At that moment he caught sight of Osches lying straight ahead of them, its few poor hovels climbing in straggling fashion up the hillside, and the yellow church, embowered in trees, looking down on them from its perch upon the summit. "There's where we shall rest, for certain."
If it were not for thoughts like these, no one, I suppose, would take the trouble to drive for two hours out of Parma to the little village of Fornovo a score of bare gray hovels on the margin of a pebbly river-bed beneath the Apennines.
And by a logical chain of circumstances, after dealing with the fleshless, pitiful fledglings ousted from their nests, he came to deal with the parents, to enter their hovels, penetrating each day further and further into a hellish sphere, and ultimately acquiring knowledge of all its frightful horror, his heart meantime bleeding, rent by terrified anguish and impotent charity.
"At this point there is massed a large population of exceedingly ignorant, destitute and superstitious people of every colour and condition men, women and children crowded together in rickety hovels, where stagnant water stood the year round, the very air impregnated with the heavy sickening odour of the packing-houses.
"It has made mean landscapes magnificent, and hovels outlast cathedrals," went on the madman. "Why should it not make lamp-posts fairer than Greek lamps; and an omnibus-ride like a painted ship? The touch of it is the finger of a strange perfection." "What is your wand?" cried the King, impatiently. "There it is," said Wayne; and pointed to the floor, where his sword lay flat and shining.
Repairing thither, I find it to be a Koordish village, where the hovels are more excavations than buildings; buffaloes, horses, goats, chickens, and human beings all find shelter under the same roof; their respective quarters are nothing but a mere railing of rough poles, and as the question of ventilation is never even thought of, the effect upon one's olfactory nerves upon entering is anything but reassuring.
Now that he looked the matter squarely in the face, it seemed absurd to believe that a tender girl like Rosa Varona could long have withstood the hardships of this hideous place; stronger people than she had succumbed, by the hundreds. Even now the hospitals were full, the sick lay untended in their hovels.
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