We went out of the shadow of the lemon-house on to the roof of the
section below us. When we came to the brink of the roof I sat down. The
padrone stood behind me, a shabby, shaky little figure on his roof in
the sky, a little figure of dilapidation, dilapidated as the
lemon-houses themselves.

We were always level with the mountain-snow opposite. A film of pure
blue was on the hills to the right and the left. There had been a wind,
but it was still now. The water breathed an iridescent dust on the far
shore, where the villages were groups of specks.

On the low level of the world, on the lake, an orange-sailed boat leaned
slim to the dark-blue water, which had flecks of foam. A woman went
down-hill quickly, with two goats and a sheep. Among the olives a man
was whistling.

'_Voyez_,' said the padrone, with distant, perfect melancholy. 'There
was once a lemon garden also there--you see the short pillars, cut off
to make a pergola for the vine. Once there were twice as many lemons as
now. Now we must have vine instead. From that piece of land I had two
hundred lire a year, in lemons. From the vine I have only eighty.'

'But wine is a valuable crop,' I said.

'Ah--_cosi-cosi_! For a man who grows much. For me--_poco, poco--peu_.'

Suddenly his face broke into a smile of profound melancholy, almost a
grin, like a gargoyle. It was the real Italian melancholy, very
deep, static.