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Goats and cows recline here after their meagre repast of scorched grasses, and the shepherds in charge have voices so soft, and manners so gentle, as to call up suggestions of the Golden Age. These pastoral folk are the primitives of Cotrone.
I made inquiry: he was down with illness, and as no one took his place I suppose the regular distribution of newspapers in Cotrone was suspended. I pictured the sort of retreat in which he had lain during those miserable hours. My own chamber contained merely the barest necessaries, and, as the gentleman of Cosenza would have said, "left something to be desired" in point of cleanliness.
In every country and every age those talk most who have least to say that is worth saying. These tonguesters of Cotrone had their predecessors in the public place of Croton, who began to gossip before dawn, and gabbled unceasingly till after nightfall; with their voices must often have mingled the bleating of goats or the lowing of oxen, just as I heard the sounds to-day.
Whereto replies the much-offended Malvolio: "That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird." He of the crossed garters disdains such fantasy. "I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion." I took my ticket for Cotrone, which once was Croton. At Croton, Pythagoras enjoyed his moment's triumph, ruling men to their own behoof.
It was the same, he went on, with the road to the cemetery; why should it not be continued right up to the cape of the Column as in olden days, over ground dove ogni passo e una memoria: where every footstep is a memory? "Rich Italians," he said, "sometimes give away money to benefit the public. But the very rich never! And at Cotrone, you must remember, every one belongs to the latter class."
I have seen a man professing to feel faint at the odour of crushed geranium leaves. I saw it, shortly after its return to dry land, in a shed near the harbour of Cotrone; the Taranto museum has now claimed it. It is a basin of purple-veined pavonazzetto marble. Originally a monolith, it now consists of two fragments; the third and smallest is still missing.
I like to think of him as still quietly happy amid his garden walls, tending flowers that grow over the dead at Cotrone. On my way back again to the town, I took a nearer view of the ruined little church, and, whilst I was so engaged, two lads driving a herd of goats stopped to look at me.
They are anything but dumb nowadays. Earth-movements, too, have tilted the coast-line up and down, and there is evidence to show that while the Tyrrhenian shore has been raised by these oscillations, the Ionian has sunk. Not long ago four columns were found in the sea at Cotrone two hundred yards from the beach; old sailors remember another group of columns visible at low tide near Caulonia.
To-day there was scarce a healthy man in Cotrone: no one had strength to resist a serious illness. This state of things he took very philosophically; I noticed once more the frankly mediaeval spirit in which he regarded the populace. Talking on, he interested me by enlarging upon the difference between southern Italians and those of the north.
My hotel afforded me little amusement after the Concordia at Cotrone, yet it did not lack its characteristic features. I found, for instance, in my bedroom a printed notice, making appeal in remarkable terms to all who occupied the chamber.
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