And this indeed came to pass, for over the intricacies of that language
I made him presently to sweat consumedly.

Of the matter of our talk there is not much to say. Henry spoke freely
and well, Madame interjecting leading questions, and holding him with
her eyes. I, on the contrary, spoke little, being occupied with the
scenes going on beneath me--the men in the piazza piling the fine grain
for the making of macaroni--the changing and chaffering groups about the
kerchiefed market-women--the dark-faced, gypsy-like men with beady eyes.
The murmur of the conversation came to me only at intervals, like voices
in a dream; and sometimes for whole sentences together I lost its
meaning completely.

Indeed, I had more pleasure in looking at the houses in Vico Averso,
which were tangled together without the semblance of a plan. Each house,
or part of a house, struggled upward to occupy its own patch of
sky-line, in a hundred different heights and breadths. Each had a scrap
of garden clinging to it along the lake-side, in which the green of the
magnolias contrasted with the grey aspens and the warmer oleanders.
There was a bright and laughing charm about the whole which drew my
heart, and I longed to spend a lifetime in these white and
foliage-fringed places.

But I found very soon that the face of Vico Averso was her fortune. For
the side of our hostel which was turned to a dark and narrow Street of
Smells took away my desire to dwell there. There came out clear in my
mind the thought and sight of our hill-farm of Culsharg, set on the edge
of its miles of heather, the free airs blowing about it, and all the
wild birds crying. My mother would be coming to the door to look for my
grandfather as he came off the hill from the sheep. A disgust at the