turned? What, madame? You, who read
these words--you say with indignation: "Certainly there is, and _I_ am
that woman!" Ah, truly? I salute you profoundly!--you are, no doubt,
the one exception!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Avellino is one of those dreamy, quiet and picturesque towns which have
not as yet been desecrated by the Vandal tourist. Persons holding
"through tickets" from Messrs. Cook or Gaze do not stop there--there
are no "sights" save the old sanctuary called Monte Virgine standing
aloft on its rugged hill, with all the memories of its ancient days
clinging to it like a wizard's cloak, and wrapping it in a sort of
mysterious meditative silence. It can look back through a vista of
eventful years to the eleventh century, when it was erected, so the
people say, on the ruins of a temple of Cybele. But what do the sheep
and geese that are whipped abroad in herds by the drovers Cook and Gaze
know of Monte Virgine or Cybele? Nothing--and they care less; and quiet
Avellino escapes from their depredations, thankful that it is not
marked on the business map of the drovers' "RUNS." Shut in by the lofty
Apennines, built on the slope of the hill that winds gently down into a
green and fruitful valley through which the river Sabato rushes and
gleams white against cleft rocks that look like war-worn and deserted
castles, a drowsy peace encircles it, and a sort of stateliness, which,
compared with the riotous fun and folly of Naples only thirty miles
away, is as though the statue of a nude Egeria were placed in rivalry
with the painted waxen image of a half-dressed ballet-dancer. Few
lovelier sights are to be seen in nature than a sunset from one of the
smaller hills round Avellino--when the peaks of the Apennines seem to
catch fire from the flaming clouds, and below them, the valleys are
full of those tender purple and gray shadows that one sees on the
canvases of Salvator Rosa, while the town itself looks like a bronzed
carving on an old shield, outlined clearly against the dazzling luster
of the sky. To this retired spot I came--glad to rest for a time from
my work of vengeance--glad to lay down my burden of bitterness for a
brief space, and become, as it were, human again, in the sight of the
near mountains. For within their close proximity, things common, things
mean seem to slip from the soul--a sort of largeness pervades the
thoughts, the cramping prosiness of daily life has no room to assert
its sway--a grand hush