ned face with
a black veil, to avoid the peering eyes of the Corellia
townsfolk--"nothing but her. Born to disgrace me. Would she were dead!
Then all would end, and I should go down--the last Guinigi--to an
honored grave."

The sick, too, are sitting at the doorways as the marchesa passes
by. The mark of fever is on many an ashy cheek. These sick have been
carried from their beds to breathe such air as evening brings. Air!
There is no air from heaven in these foul streets. No sweet breath
circulates; no summer scents of grasses and flowers reach the lonely
town hung up so high. The summer sun scorches. The icy winds of
winter, sweeping down from Alpine ridges, whistle round the walls.
Within are chilly, desolate hearths, on which no fire is kindled.
These sick, as the carriage passes, turn their weary eyes, and lift up
their wasted hands in mute salutations to that dreaded mistress who is
lord of all--the great marchesa. Will they not lie in the marchesa's
ground when their hour comes? Alas! how soon--their weakness tells
them very soon! Will they not be carried in an open bier up those
long flights of steps--all hers--cut in the rocky sides of overlapping
rocks, to the cemetery, darkly shaded by waving cypresses? The ground
is hers, the rocks, the steps, the stones, the very flowers that
brown, skinny hands will sprinkle on their bier--all hers. From birth
to bridal, and the marriage-bed (so fruitful to the poor), from bridal
to death, all hers. The land they live on, and the graves they fill,
all--but a shadow of her greatness!

At the corner of the squalid, ill-smelling street through which she
is now passing, is the town fountain. This fountain, once a willful
mountain-torrent, now cruelly captured and borne hither by municipal
force, splashes downward through a sculptured circle cut in a
marble slab, into a covered trough below. Here bold-eyed maidens are
gathered, who poise copper vessels on their dark heads--maidens who
can chat, and laugh, and romp, on holidays, and with flushed faces
dance wild tarantellas (fingers for castanets), where the old tale of
love is told in many a subtile step, and shuffle, rush, escape, and
feint, ending in certain capture! Beside the maidens linger some
mountain lads. Now their work is over, they loll against the wall,
pipe in mouth, or lie stretched on a plot of grass that grows green
under the spray of the fountain. In a dark angle, a little behind from
these, there is a shrin