Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/157

 of their night's gaming losses, or their wagers on coming races.

The finest of fine gentlemen, the grandest of grand seigneurs, in court or drawing-room or diplomatic circle, Paolo della Rocca, amongst his own grey olive orchards and the fragrance of his great wooden storehouses, was as simple as Cincinnatus, laughed like a boy with his old steward, caressed like a woman the broad heads of his beasts at the plough, and sat under a great mulberry to break his bread at noonday, hearkening to the talk of his peasants as though he were one of them.

The old Etrurian gentleness and love of the rural life are still alive in this land; may they never perish, for they are to the nation, as the timely rains to the vine, as the sweet strong sun to the harvest.

This simplicity, this naturalness, which in the Italian will often underlie the highest polish of culture and of ceremony, had a curious fascination for a woman in whose own life there had been no place for simplicity and no thought for nature.

She had been in the bonds of the world always,