Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/291

 for her, because he thought if others knew that she lived here down in the ground they might do what she wanted, and so he would lose the taste of her pratajoli buoni and blackberries and broth, and all those centimes that got him bread and polenta and salt fish and rude sweetmeats, such as old Deaneira sold in San Lionardo, sitting at the stall under the battered Madonna in her iron cage, against the old watch-tower wall, that looked down from the hills on moor and sea.

'Are you happy here?' he asked her now, sitting with his legs drawn up amongst the purple loosestrife, all dry with the past summer heat; watching her as she ate, while his goats strayed about, cropping what they would, the fourfooted Huns that ravage the mountains and the forests and lay them bare as with fire, so that nothing will ever spring again where their little hoofs have trodden and their little teeth have browsed.

'Happy!' echoed Musa; the word sounded strangely. 'I do not know. I am alone; that is always good.'

She had never heard of Chateaubriand, who wrote above his house in the depth of