Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 415 pages of information about Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series.

Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 415 pages of information about Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series.

While we were at Fosdinovo the sky filmed over, and there came a halo round the sun.  This portended change; and by evening, after we had reached La Spezzia, earth, sea, and air were conscious of a coming tempest.  At night I went down to the shore, and paced the sea-wall they have lately built along the Rada.  The moon was up, but overdriven with dry smoky clouds, now thickening to blackness over the whole bay, now leaving intervals through which the light poured fitfully and fretfully upon the wrinkled waves; and ever and anon they shuddered with electric gleams which were not actual lightning.  Heaven seemed to be descending on the sea; one might have fancied that some powerful charms were drawing down the moon with influence malign upon those still resisting billows.  For not as yet the gulf was troubled to its depth, and not as yet the breakers dashed in foam against the moonlight-smitten promontories.  There was but an uneasy murmuring of wave to wave; a whispering of wind, that stooped its wing and hissed along the surface, and withdrew into the mystery of clouds again; a momentary chafing of churned water round the harbour piers, subsiding into silence petulant and sullen.  I leaned against an iron stanchion and longed for the sea’s message.  But nothing came to me, and the drowned secret of Shelley’s death those waves which were his grave revealed not.

  Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!

Meanwhile the incantation swelled in shrillness, the electric shudders deepened.  Alone in this elemental overture to tempest I took no note of time, but felt, through self-abandonment to the symphonic influence, how sea and air, and clouds akin to both, were dealing with each other complainingly, and in compliance to some maker of unrest within them.  A touch upon my shoulder broke this trance; I turned and saw a boy beside me in a coastguard’s uniform.  Francesco was on patrol that night; but my English accent soon assured him that I was no contrabbandiere, and he too leaned against the stanchion and told me his short story.  He was in his nineteenth year, and came from Florence, where his people live in the Borgo Ognissanti.  He had all the brightness of the Tuscan folk, a sort of innocent malice mixed with espieglerie.  It was diverting to see the airs he gave himself on the strength of his new military dignity, his gun, and uniform, and night duty on the shore.  I could not help humming to myself Non piu andrai; for Francesco was a sort of Tuscan Cherubino.  We talked about picture galleries and libraries in Florence, and I had to hear his favourite passages from the Italian poets.  And then there came the plots of Jules Verne’s stories and marvellous narrations about l’ uomo cavallo, l’ uomo volante, l’ uomo pesce.  The last of these personages turned out to be Paolo Boynton (so pronounced), who had swam the Arno in his diving dress, passing the several bridges, and when he came to the great weir ‘allora tutti

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.