steep lanes and slept under its red-brown roofs, bawled to each other
from its deep arched doorways to tell of death or birth, and gathered
dandelion leaves upon its ramparts to cure their shrunken and swollen
bladders. He knew them every one, he was familiar with and kind to
them; but he was aloof from them by temperament and thought, and he
showed them his soul no more than the night birds in the towers
showed their tawny breasts and eyes of topaz to the hungry and ragged
fowls which scratched amongst the dust and refuse on the stones in
the glare of day.

"_Il Bel Adone_!" sighed matrons and the maidens of the scattered
farms and the old gloomy castellated granges which here and there,
leagues distant from one another, broke the green and silent monotony
of the vast historic country whose great woods sloped from hill to
plain. But to these, too, he was indifferent, though they had the
stern and solid beauty of the Latium women on their broad low brows,
their stately busts, their ox-like eyes, their shapely feet and
limbs; and often, joined to that, the red-gold hair and the fair skin
of the Adriatic type. As they bound the sheaves, and bore the
water-jars, and went in groups through the seeding grass to chapel,
or fountain, or shrine, they had the free, frank grace of an earlier
time; just such as these had carried the votive doves to the altars
of Venus and chanted by the waters of the Edera the worship of Isis
and her son. But to Adone they had no charm. What did he desire or
dream of? Himself he could not have said. Perhaps they were too warm;
it was certain that they left him cold.

Sometimes he learned over the river and looked longingly into its
depths.