Trepof.

"How are you, Signor? Are you back from San Carlo? Did you hear
the diva sing? It is only at Naples you can hear singing like
hers."

I looked up, and recognised my host. I had seated myself with my
back to the facade of my hotel, under the window of my own room.




Monte-Allegro, November 30, 1859.


We were all resting--myself, my guides, and their mules--on a road
from Sciacca to Girgenti, at a tavern in the miserable village of
Monte-Allegro, whose inhabitants, consumed by the mal aria,
continually shiver in the sun. But nevertheless they are Greeks,
and their gaiety triumphs over all circumstances. A few gather
about the tavern, full of smiling curiosity. One good story
would have sufficed, had I known how to tell it to them, to make
them forget all the woes of life. They had all a look of
intelligence! and their women, although tanned and faded, wore
their long black cloaks with much grace.

Before me I could see old ruins whitened by the sea-wind--ruins
about which no grass ever grows. The dismal melancholy of deserts
prevails over this arid land, whose cracked surface can barely
nourish a few shriveled mimosas, cacti, and dwarf palms. Twenty