water-course, mostly dry, with lovely oleanders growing in the middle
of it; saw over multitudinous oliveyards and vineyards; saw over mills
with great wheels, and little ribbons of water to drive them--running
sometimes along the tops of walls to get at their work; saw over
rugged pines, and ugly, verdureless, raw hillsides--away to the sea,
lying in the heat like a heavenly vat in which all the tails of all
the peacocks God was making, lay steeped in their proper dye. Numerous
were the sharp turns the donkeys made in their ascent; and at this
corner and that, the sweetest life-giving wind would leap out upon the
travellers, as if it had been lying there in wait to surprise them
with the heavenliest the old earth, young for all her years, could
give them. But they were getting too tired to enjoy anything, and were
both indeed not far from asleep on the backs of their humble beasts,
when a sudden, more determined yet more cheerful assault of their
guide upon his donkeys, roused both them and their riders; and looking
sleepily up, with his loud _heeoop_ ringing in their ears, and a sense
of the insidious approach of two headaches, they saw before them the
little town, its houses gathered close for protection, like a brood of
chickens, and the white steeple of the church rising above them, like
the neck of the love-valiant hen.

Passing through the narrow arch of the low-browed gateway, hot as was
the hour, a sudden cold struck to their bones. For not a ray of light
shone into the narrow street. The houses were lofty as those of a
city, and parted so little by the width of the street that friends on
opposite sides might almost from their windows have shaken
hands. Narrow, rough, steep old stone-stairs ran up between and inside
the houses, all the doors of which were open to the air--here,
however, none of the sweetest. Everywhere was shadow; everywhere one
or another evil odour; everywhere a look of abject and dirty