In the carriage sat a school-boy, a book open upon his knee.  When our eyes had met twice or thrice, and an ingenuous smile rose to his handsome face, I opened conversation, and he told me that he came every day to school from a little place called San Sostene to Catanzaro, there being no nearer instruction above the elementary; a journey of some sixteen miles each way, and not to be reckoned by English standards, for it meant changing at the Marina for the valley train, and finally going up the mountain side by diligenza.  The lad flushed with delight in his adventure—­a real adventure for him to meet with some one from far-off England.  Just before we stopped at San Sostene, he presented me with his card—­why had he a card?—­which bore the name, De Luca Fedele.  A bright and spirited lad, who seemed to have the best qualities of his nation; I wish I might live to hear him spoken of as a man doing honour to Italy.

At this station another travelling companion took the school-boy’s place; a priest, who soon addressed me in courteous talk.  He journeyed only for a short way, and, when alighting, pointed skyward through the dark (night had fallen) to indicate his mountain parish miles inland.  He, too, offered me his card, adding a genial invitation; I found he was Parroco (parish priest) of San Nicola at Badolato.  I would ask nothing better than to visit him, some autumn-tide, when grapes are ripening above the Ionian Sea.

It was a wild night.  When the rain at length ceased, lightning flashed ceaselessly about the dark heights of Aspromonte; later, the moon rose, and, sailing amid grandly illumined clouds, showed white waves rolling in upon the beach.  Wherever the train stopped, that sea-music was in my ears—­now seeming to echo a verse of Homer, now the softer rhythm of Theocritus.  Think of what one may in day-time on this far southern shore, its nights are sacred to the poets of Hellas.  In rounding Cape Spartivento, I strained my eyes through the moonlight—­unhappily a waning moon, which had shone with full orb the evening I ascended to Catanzaro—­to see the Sicilian mountains; at length they stood up darkly against the paler night.  There came back to my memory a voyage at glorious sunrise, years ago, when I passed through the Straits of Messina, and all day long gazed at Etna, until its cone, solitary upon the horizon, shone faint and far in the glow of evening—­the morrow to bring me a first sight of Greece.

CHAPTER XVIII

REGGIO

By its natural situation Reggio is marked for an unquiet history.  It was a gateway of Magna Graecia; it lay straight in the track of conquering Rome when she moved towards Sicily; it offered points of strategic importance to every invader or defender of the peninsula throughout the mediaeval wars.  Goth and Saracen, Norman, Teuton and Turk, seized, pillaged, and abandoned, each in turn, this stronghold overlooking the narrow