Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/195

 'Aye; all lies come out of books, I believe, and some truth too, they say. For my part, a book was always a thing I thought best put in the priest's hands, and left there.'

Musa grew diligent in her endeavours to read well and rapidly. But nothing did she find of the dead people. All that she had to read in were stories of the saints, and the proclamations about taxes and other annoyances that were posted up on the piers of Santa Tarsilla.

'Who has got books?' she wondered.

No one at all in her world.

She went back to the world of the dead, and imagined all that she would have liked to find in the books. Imagination without culture is crippled and moves slowly; but it can be pure imagination, and rich also, as folk-lore will tell the vainest.

There was that in the silence, the solitude, and the sense of ownership which made the subterranean sepulchres beautiful and beloved to the child; if any other had broken in on them, their spell would have been weakened; she grew familiar with the strange dancers on the walls, the strange creatures, and flowers, and symbols; she found ornaments