Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/636

616 To-day the road was deep in white dust, and the sparse shrubbery of the little square parched with drought. An Arab cook, tall and thin, wearing a cotton robe, striped like the petals of a tulip, turban, and yellow slippers, bargained with a stout contadina for a brace of ducks, the row of villas behind the odd pair rising against a blue heaven, with the crest of a palm-tree visible above a boundary-wall. A regiment of soldiers, commanded by a brisk young officer with the cock's plumes of the Bersagliere fluttering on his hat, marched to a summer camp, the bugle-note awakening the languid echoes. A band of orphans, in blue gowns and capes, guided by a meek sister in wide-winged bonnet, passed beneath the plane-trees, and vanished, as if in response to the tinkle of a church-bell. The water-carrier made his round, with sober gray donkey, and little cart stored with wicker flasks of limpid crystal fresh from mountain-springs. A penitent, clad in black gown and cowl, rattled his box for alms, pausing on the white road a moment, then flitting on, like some night-bird overtaken by day.

Evening found Dr. Weisener strolling along the sands, with his wide felt hat pressed down over his brows, and a cigar between his lips.

The Southern sunset had wrought such magic with the scene as flooding the sea with liquid gold, while each headland of the coast glowed orange and russet-red in the luminous atmosphere. The Carrara peaks gathered the sun's last rays, and the scarped surface of the quarries blushed from gray and white to sudden rose. Then the twilight came on in subtile, almost imperceptible gradations of change, fading the crimson and gold to pearly reflections on the glancing waves, and quenching the fiery beacons kindled on the summits by the expiring day.

The eyes of the quiet pedestrian, following the line of shore, noted the fitful flicker of a torch, which recalled to him Shelley's funeral rites, with libations of oil and wine, on these sands. He mechanically repeated,—

His gaze reverted to the mountain-range inland, in turn. Those peaks acquired the charm of an infinite suggestiveness, in the evening hour. The blue haze of heat which had earlier veiled crag and ravine was now deepening to purple shadow about the base, and brooded over the rice-fields, sown with sickly-sweet lilies.

Up there mortals are born, rejoice, suffer, and die, separated from the world by that atmosphere signifying remoteness in distance. Slaves