Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/638

618 ing of a transparent atmosphere, and perched on the crest of purple Apennine. No graceful campanile raised a fretwork of arches against the blue sky, no dome crowned the mass of spreading roofs, lending the dignity of past magnificence to existing squalor, no golden mosaic sparkled on the façade of a mediæval palace: a cluster of houses in every stage of dilapidation was gained by the steep path which wound up in many a zigzag turn to the low arch serving as town gate. A street, roughly paved, and slimy, traversed the place, like an artery, from the gate to the Piazza above,—an open space flanked by the ancient church of the Annunziata, a shop or two, and opposite by the massive portal, twin towers, and long boundary-wall of the Villa Margherita.

The Piazza was necessary to the existence of Spina as a town. The houses, huddled together against the rock, as if to lessen the danger of being blown away in some tempest, with casements heavily grated, and an occasional gallery displaying the family washing fluttering at a giddy height from the ground, represented the shelter of a naked hearthstone, while the Piazza was a true open-air drawing-room. On mild evenings the townsfolk gathered here to take the air, the women with hands wrapped in their aprons from force of habit, and in grateful remembrance of the scaldino thus held, in nipping January weather, the men smoking the thin reed of native cigar which must be a Barmecidal feast to the lover of tobacco, as they lounged against the wall, youth singing, jesting, and dancing. At such times the gossip usually turned on the increased price of bread and salt, or the wages paid in the marble-quarries and studios, where the men worked. Cripples abounded, forced to subsist on alms, as victims of the accidents inseparable from such a calling. The whims of the last Count di Ginestra, their feudal lord, also furnished a topic of unfailing interest, although his death had brought no alleviation to the pinching want of the survivors gathered about his gates.

Winter storms swept through the old houses, and summer heat scorched the walls, while mould and decay stagnated about dark corridor and stairway. Flowers bloomed at Spina only when fostered on some sheltered window-ledge, and chiefly in tufts of wild blossoms and grasses gathered by the wayside to place before the shrine of the Madonna in a niche of the convent wall.

At the hour when Dr. Weisener received the note of invitation to visit the Villa Margherita, Sabina Regaldi descended the flight of broken steps from her home, and approached the public fountain, carrying the battered copper vessel which had done service in the Regaldi household since brought by the mother with her bridal dowry of linen and metal utensils.

The rill of water trickled from a stone urn into a sculptured basin, with a musical sound, and, above, the faded fresco of the Madonna, in her shrine of the convent wall, was protected with a glass sash. The oil-lamp suspended before the picture winked tremulously in the light of day.

The sunshine lingered on pretty Sabina, with her lustrous black hair twined around her head in heavy tresses, and her slender figure arrayed to all possible advantage in a faded yellow gown. The handkerchief