The position of my room, which looked upon the piazza, enabled me to hear a great deal of what went on in the town.  The life of Cotrone began about three in the morning; at that hour I heard the first voices, upon which there soon followed the bleating of goats and the tinkling of ox-bells.  No doubt the greater part of the poor people were in bed by eight o’clock every evening; only those who had dealings in the outer world were stirring when the diligenza arrived about ten, and I suspect that some of these snatched a nap before that late hour.  Throughout the day there sounded from the piazza a ceaseless clamour of voices, such a noise as in England would only rise from some excited crowd on a rare occasion; it was increased by reverberations from the colonnade which runs all round in front of the shops.  When the north-east gale had passed over, there ensued a few days of sullen calm, permitting the people to lead their ordinary life in open air.  I grew to recognize certain voices, those of men who seemingly had nothing to do but to talk all day long.  Only the sound reached me; I wish I could have gathered the sense of these interminable harangues and dialogues.  In every country and every age those talk most who have least to say that is worth saying.  These tonguesters of Cotrone had their predecessors in the public place of Croton, who began to gossip before dawn, and gabbled unceasingly till after nightfall; with their voices must often have mingled the bleating of goats or the lowing of oxen, just as I heard the sounds to-day.

One day came a street organ, accompanied by singing, and how glad I was!  The first note of music, this, that I had heard at Cotrone.  The instrument played only two or three airs, and one of them became a great favourite with the populace; very soon, numerous voices joined with that of the singer, and all this and the following day the melody sounded, near or far.  It had the true characteristics of southern song; rising tremolos, and cadences that swept upon a wail of passion; high falsetto notes, and deep tum-tum of infinite melancholy.  Scorned by the musician, yet how expressive of a people’s temper, how suggestive of its history!  At the moment when this strain broke upon my ear, I was thinking ill of Cotrone and its inhabitants; in the first pause of the music I reproached myself bitterly for narrowness and ingratitude.  All the faults of the Italian people are whelmed in forgiveness as soon as their music sounds under the Italian sky.  One remembers all they have suffered, all they have achieved in spite of wrong.  Brute races have flung themselves, one after another, upon this sweet and glorious land; conquest and slavery, from age to age, have been the people’s lot.  Tread where one will, the soil has been drenched with blood.  An immemorial woe sounds even through the lilting notes of Italian gaiety.  It is a country wearied and regretful, looking ever backward to the things of old; trivial in its latter life, and unable to hope sincerely for the future.  Moved by these voices singing over the dust of Croton, I asked pardon for all my foolish irritation, my impertinent fault-finding.  Why had I come hither, if it was not that I loved land and people?  And had I not richly known the recompense of my love?