range, to meet it out of the
variegated tangle of tinted houses composing the Old Town. High upon the
summit of the Old Town rose the slim, rose-coloured cupola of the church
in a sapphire sky. The regular smiting sound of a cracked bell,
viciously rung, came from it. The eastern prospect was shut in by the
last olive-clad spurs of the Alps, that tread violently and gigantically
into the sea. The pathways of the hotel garden were being gently swept
by a child of the sun, who could not have sacrificed his graceful
dignity to haste; and many peaceful morning activities proceeded on the
road, on the shore, and on the jetty. A procession of tawny
fishing-boats passed from the harbour one after another straight into
the eye of the sun, and were lost there. Smoke climbed up softly into
the soft air from the houses and hotels on the level of the road. The
trams met and parted, silently widening the distance between them which
previously they had narrowed. And the sun rose and rose, bathing the
blue sea and the rich verdure and the glaring white architecture in the
very fluid of essential life. The whole azure coast basked in it like an
immense cat, commencing the day with a voluptuous savouring of the fact
that it was alive. The sun is the treacherous and tyrannical god of the
South, and when he withdraws himself, arbitrary and cruel, the land and
the people shiver and prepare to die.

It was such a morning as renders sharp and unmistakable the division
between body and soul--if the soul suffers. The body exults; the body
cries out that nothing on earth matters except climate. Nothing can damp
the glorious ecstasy of the body baptized in that air, caressed by that
incomparable sun. It laughs, and it laughs at the sorrow of the soul. It
imperiously bids the soul to choose the path of pleasure; it shouts aloud
that sacrifice is vain and honour an empty word, full of inconveniences,
and that to exist amply and vehemently, to listen to the blood as it
beats strongly through the veins, is the end of the eternal purpose. Ah!
how easy it is to martyrize one's self by some fatal decision made
grandly in the exultation of a supreme moment! And how difficult to
endure the martyrdom without regret! I regretted my renunciation. My body
rebelled against it, and even my soul rebelled. I scorned myself for a
fool, for a sentimental weakling--yes, and for a moral coward. Every
argument that presented itself damaged the justice of my decision.