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Yonder square white house, standing out to sea, fronting Murano and the Alps, they call the Oasa degli Spiriti. No one cares to inhabit it; for here, in old days, it was the wont of the Venetians to lay their dead for a night's rest before their final journey to the graveyard of S. Michele.
Near where this occurred there is a house with the inscription "Casa Dei Spiriti"; but I do not think the Italians believe in either ghosts or witches; their chief superstition seems to be the "Jettatura" or evil eye, which they have inherited from the early Romans, and, I believe, Etruscans. They consider it a bad omen to meet a monk or priest on first going out in the morning.
This is a protected float, where the wood which comes from Cadore and the hills of the Ampezzo is stored in spring. Yonder square white house, standing out to sea, fronting Murano and the Alps, they call the Casa degli Spiriti.
On the mean and solitary front of the Casa dei Spiriti there shone a splendor of light; the lagoon was azure and gold; the main-land a mist of trees in their spring leaf; while far away the cypresses of San Francesco, the slender tower of Torcello, and the long line of Murano and farther still the majestic wall of silver Alps greeted the eyes that loved them, as the ear is soothed by the notes of a glorious and yet familiar music.
Through the shafts of the pines we had caught glorious glimpses of the blue mountain world below us; but now the beech folded us in its arms, and whispered in our ears the legends of our Northern home. There, on the ridges of the Mysian Olympus, sacred to the bright gods of Grecian song, I found the inspiration of our darker and colder clime and age. "O gloriosi spiriti degli boschi!"
He moved slightly away, and held the lapels of his coat with his thumbs under the collar as his manner was: he had a wonderful power of standing perfectly still, and in that position reminded one sometimes of Dante's spiriti magni con occhi tardi e gravi. And he judged aright: she would have been impatient of polite conversation.
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