It must have been in the little streets—­impassable for horses—­that the people sat and talked, as Heine fabled, in their doorways, and touched knees with the people sitting and talking on the thresholds of the opposite side.  But we saw no gossipers there on our Sunday in Genoa; and I think the domestic race of Heine’s day no longer lives in Genoa, for every body we saw on the streets was gayly dressed in the idea of the last fashions, and was to be met chiefly in the public promenades.  The fashions were French; but here still lingers the lovely phantom of the old national costume of Genoa, and snow-white veils fluttered from many a dark head, and caressed many an olive cheek.  It is the kindest and charitablest of attirements, this white veil, and, while decking beauty to the most perilous effect, befriends and modifies age and ugliness.

The pleasure with which I look at the splendor of an Italian crowd in winter is always touched with melancholy.  I know that, at the time of its noonday promenade, it has nothing but a cup of coffee in its stomach; that it has emerged from a house as cold and dim as a cellar; and that it will presently go home to dine on rice and boiled beef.  I know that chilblains secretly gnaw the hands inside of its kid gloves, and I see in the rawness of its faces the anguish of winter-long suffering from cold.  But I also look at many in this crowd with the eye of the economist, and wonder how people practicing even so great self-denial as they can contrive to make so much display on their little means,—­how those clerks of public offices, who have rarely an income of five hundred dollars a year, can dress with such peerless gorgeousness.  I suppose the national instinct teaches them ways and means unknown to us.  The passion for dress is universal:  the men are as fond of it as the women; and, happily, clothes are comparatively cheap.  It is no great harm in itself, this display:  it is only a pity that there is often nothing, or worse than nothing, under the shining surface.

We walked with the brilliant Genoese crowd upon the hill where the public promenade overlooks a landscape of city and country, houses and gardens, vines and olives, which it makes the heart ache to behold, it is so faultlessly beautiful.  Behind us the fountain was—­

  “Shaking its loosened silver in the sun;”

the birds were singing; and there were innumerable fair girls going by, about whom one might have made romances if one had not known better.  Our friend pointed out to us the “pink jail” in which Dickens lived while at Genoa; and showed us on the brow of a distant upland the villa, called Il Paradiso, which Byron had occupied.  I dare say this Genoese joke is already in print:  That the Devil reentered Paradise when Byron took this villa.  Though, in loveliest Italy, one is half-persuaded that the Devil had never left Paradise.

After lingering a little longer on that delicious height, we turned and went down for a stroll through the city.