Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/300

 spent all one winter there, I remember their telling me, and were sorry to go at the end. They went because it was rather cheap, but stayed because it was more lovely than the expensive places. From Rapallo, through Zoagli to Chiavari, we were high above the sea, winding through ravine after ravine, but at Chiavari the best of the coast was behind us; and at Sestri, much to our disgust, we had to turn our backs on the sea. Still, it was delicious mounting up among the foothills of the Apennines by the Col di Baracca, and running down to Spezzia, lying like a pretty, lazy woman, looking out upon the green gulf named after it. We had lunch in a cool, agreeable hotel to which I felt grateful because of its pretty name—the Croce di Malta. I did want to go and see Shelley's house at Lerici, but—well, I saw its photograph instead; for there was our Napier "sleeping with one valve open," luring us on, on under the shadow of the Apennines. One does feel a wretch always "going on" instead of lingering, but that microbe I told you about gives one a fever. Think of running through Lucca! But, if we did what we planned in the day we must sacrifice something, so we sacrificed Lucca to Pisa. The very name, before our arrival, made me a child again, looking through the big stereoscope in your study at the Leaning Tower, or at the steel engraving in Finden's Landscape Annual. But from the moment I saw it, like a carving in ivory, reclining gracefully on the bosom of a golden cloud, I forgot the stereoscope and the Annual. In future I shall always see it against that cloud of rosy sunset-gold.