looking to the future of Europe, the more that France and England--and
America--can cultivate in their citizens some degree, at any rate, of
that intimate understanding of a foreign nation which shines so
conspicuously in the work of these two Frenchmen the safer will that
future be.



CHAPTER V


AMALFI AND ROME. HAMPDEN AND _MARCELLA_


It was in November, 1891, that I finished _David Grieve_, after a long
wrestle of more than three years. I was tired out, and we fled south for
rest to Rome, Naples, Amalfi, and Ravello. The Cappucini Hotel at
Amalfi, Madame Palumbo's inn at Ravello, remain with me as places of
pure delight, shone on even in winter by a more than earthly sun.

Madame Palumbo was, as her many guests remember, an Englishwoman, and
showed a special zeal in making English folk comfortable. And can one
ever forget the sunrise over the Gulf of Salerno from the Ravello
windows? It was December when we were there; yet nothing spoke of
winter. From the inn, perched on a rocky point above the coast, one
looked straight down for hundreds of feet, through lemon-groves and
olive-gardens, to the blue water. Flaming over the mountains rose an
unclouded sun, shining on the purple coast, with its innumerable
rock-towns--"_tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis_"--and sending
broad paths over the "wine-dark" sea. Never, I think, have I felt the