itations and shy
peerings; then, no longer afraid, almost naked as he was, he ran to me
and took my hand.

[Illustration: PORTO VENERE.

_Alinari_]

"Will the Signore see the church?" said he, pulling me that way.

The Signore was willing. Thus it was, hand in hand with Eros, that I
mounted the broken steps of the tower of Venus, his mother.

How may I describe the wonder of that place? For at last, he before, I
following, though he still held my hand, we came out of the stairway on
to a platform on the top of the tower surrounded by a broken battlement.
It was as though I had suddenly entered the last hiding-place of
Aphrodite herself. On the floor sat an old and lame man sharpening a
scythe, and beside him a little child lay among the broken corn that was
strewn over the whole platform. Where the battlements had once frowned,
now stood sheaves of smiling corn, golden and nodding in the wind and
the sun. Suddenly the lad who had led me hither seized the flail and
began to beat the corn and stalks strewn over the floor, while the old
man, quavering a little, sang a long-drawn-out gay melody, and the
little girl beat her tiny hands in time to the work and the music. Then,
unheard, into this miracle came a young woman,--ah, was it not
Persephone,--slim as an osier in the shadow, walking like a bright
peacock straight above herself, climbing the steps, and her hands were
on her hips and on her black head was a sheaf of corn. Then she breathed
deep, gazed over the blue sea, and set her burden down with its fellows
on the parapet, smiling and beating her hands at the little girl.

Porto Venere rises out of the sea like Tintagel--but a classic sea, a
sea covered with broken blossoms. It was evening when I returned again
to the Temple of Venus The moon was like a sickle of silver, far away
the waves fawned along the shore as though to call the nymphs from the
woods; the sun was set; out of the east night was coming. In the great
caves, full of coolness and mystery, the Tritons seemed to be playing
with sea monsters, while from far away I thought I heard the lamentable
voice of Ariadne weeping for Theseus. Ah no, they are not dead, the
beautiful, fair gods. Here, in the temple of Aphrodite, on the threshold
of Italy, I will lift up my heart. Though the songs we made are dead and
the dances forgotten, though the statues are broken, the temples
destroyed, still in my heart there is a song and in my blood a murmur as
of dan