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Yo'd come on a bit o' creakin' wood windlass like a well-head, an' you was let down i' th' bight of a rope, fendin' yoursen off the side wi' one hand, carryin' a candle stuck in a lump o' clay with t'other, an' clickin' hold of a rope with t'other hand." "An' that's three of them," said Mulvaney. "Must be a good climate in those parts." Learoyd took no heed.
His pages may be said to supply a gloss to Longhi's paintings, and the two men together complete the picture of Venetian frivolity in their day and night. The well-head nearer the Giants' Stairs was the work of Alberghetti and is signed inside. Coryat has a passage about the wells which shows how much more animated a scene the ducal courtyard used to present than now.
In the middle of the garden there is an old well with three arches of carved stone that spring from three pillars and meet above the centre of the well-head, and the double iron chain runs over a wheel, and has two wrought copper buckets, one at each end of it; but the water is now used only for watering the flowers.
A pillar stands all forlorn in a field; and quite close to the church are erected two others the larger of cipollino, beautified by a patina of golden lichen; a marble well-head, worn half through with usage of ropes, may be found buried in the rank grass. The plain whereon stood the great city of Sipus is covered, now, with bristly herbage.
The pointed arcades of this ancient building enclosed the remains of floriated mouldings, and the walls of the court showed traces of fresco-painting; but clothes-lines now hung between the arches, and about the well-head in the centre of the court sat a group of tattered women with half-naked children playing in the dirt at their feet.
But inwardly we felt like Torturers of the Inquisition, and I knew by Aunt Kathryn's breathing that she could hardly help exclaiming, "Oh, do pay the poor man whatever he asks for everything." "Will you give five hundred lire for the well-head?" Mr. Barrymore finally demanded, with a reminder of past warnings in his eye. "Yes," answered Aunt Kathryn languidly, her hands clenched under a lace boa.
Dark lines of stakes marked the blue ship-ways that ran out to open sea, and down them plied the ships, spreading painted wings to the evening breeze. Leslie said, "I see in the Gem that there is a good old well-head to be had from a man on the Riva Ca' di Dio. I want well-heads, as you know. We'll go and see, shall we?" The crystal peace of the lagoon was shattered for Peter.
'Brown and I managed easily enough to get the slab into its place, and he fixed it very firmly with the irons and wedges you had desired him to get, and we contrived to smear the surface with mud so that it looks just like the rest of the wall. One thing I did notice in the carving on the well-head, which I think must have escaped you.
The first is the age of passionate desire; Petrarch poring over a Homer he could not understand, and Boccaccio in his maturity learning Greek, in order that he might drink from the well-head of poetic inspiration, are the heroes of this period. They inspired the Italians with a thirst for antique culture. Next comes the age of acquisition and of libraries.
What can La Grenadiere be worth, you wonder; La Grenadiere, with its stone staircase, its beaten path and triple terrace, its two acres of vineyard, its flowering roses about the balustrades, its worn steps, well-head, rampant clematis, and cosmopolitan trees? It is idle to make a bid!
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