Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 19, 2025
I don't need an object-lesson. I am not utterly without imagination. I can see Sampaolo with my mind's eye. And seeing it, I decide in cold blood that not for forty million Sampaolos would I give up the woman I adore. There I 've made the journey, and come back. Now I renew my suit. Will you have me?" He stood over her again.
"Once upon a time Sampaolo was a veritable Island of the Blessed," she answered sadly. "But now no more. Since its union with what they call the Kingdom of Italy, Sampaolo has been, rather, an Island of the Distressed." "Ah ?" said Anthony, again on a tone, with a mien, that pressed her to continue.
"You would naturally endeavour to make yourself agreeable to her, and to capture her affections," she retorted, slipping the ring back upon its finger, and clasping her hands. "Besides, she could hardly be indifferent to the circumstance that you have it in your power to regularise her position. She calls herself the Countess of Sampaolo.
Those who have recently visited Sampaolo will remember the Hôtel de Rome as a small, new, spick-and-span establishment, built at the corner of the Piazza San Guido and the Riva Vittorio Emmanuele, and presenting none of that "local colour in the shape of dirt and discomfort" which we are warned to expect in Italy, if we depart from the track beaten by the tourist.
Tiu, tiu, tiu will, will, will weep, weep, weep I can hear them now. But I must stop, or I shall go on for ever. Believe me, the beauties of Sampaolo are very great." It was a long speech, but it had had an attentive listener.
But the part of Italy where I most often live, the part I like best, is a part you will never have heard of a little castaway island in the Adriatic, about fifty miles north from Ancona: a little mountainous island, all fragrant of rosemary and basil, all grey with olive-trees, all grey, save where the grey is broken by the green of vineyards, or the white and green of villas with their gardens, or the white and red of villages, with their red roofs, and white walls and campanili, all grey, and yet all blue and gold, between the blue sea and the blue sky, in the golden light, the little, unknown, beautiful island of Sampaolo."
As she spoke, I think Anthony beheld his own air-vision of Sampaolo; I fancy the familiar park of Craford, the smooth, well-groomed, well-fed English landscape, melted away; I doubt if he saw anything of the actual save the white form, the strenuous face, the shining eyes, of his informant.
"It would be worth your while," said Susanna, "the next time you find yourself in its vicinity, to do Sampaolo the honour of an inspection. It is easily reached. The Austrian-Lloyd coasting steamers from Venice call there once a week, and there is a boat every Monday and Thursday from Ancona.
I don't know what their song was, but they had good voices, and while one of them carried the melody, the other sang a second. Anthony, morose and listless, Adrian, all agog with excitement, had been looking down upon this spectacle for some minutes in silence. It was their first glimpse of daylit Sampaolo. They had arrived from Venice last night after dark.
And it is to discuss them that I have inveigled you into taking this walk with me. Does n't the sort of English weather you 're at present getting a taste of make you wish you had never left Italy?" "Oh," she acquainted him, "it sometimes rains in Italy." "Does it, indeed?" he enquired, opening his eyes. "But never surely never at Sampaolo?" "Yes, even sometimes at Sampaolo," she laughed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking