III

The gate of Italy, I said in speaking of her, and indeed it is one of
the derivations of her name Genoa,--Janua the gate, founded, as the
fourteenth-century inscription in the Duomo asserts, by Janus, a Trojan
prince skilled in astrology, who, while seeking a healthy and safe place
for his dwelling, sailed by chance into this bay, where was a little
city founded by Janus, King of Italy, a great-grandson of Noah, and
finding the place such as he wished, he gave it his name and his power.
Now, whether the great-grandson of Noah was truly the original founder
of the city, or Janus the Trojan, or another, it is certainly older than
the Christian religion, so that some have thought that Janus, that old
god who once presided at the beginning of all noble things, was the
divine originator of this city also. And remembering the sun that
continually makes Genoa to seem all of precious stone, of moonstone or
alabaster, it seems indeed likely enough, for Janus was worshipped of
old as the sun, he opened the year too, and the first month bears his
name; and while on earth he was the guardian deity of gates, in heaven
he was porter, and his sign was a ship; therefore he may well have taken
to himself the city of ships, the gateway of Italy, Genoa.

And through that gate what beautiful, terrible, and mysterious things
have passed into oblivion; Saints who have perhaps seen the very face of
Jesus; legions strong in the everlasting name of Caesar, that have lost
themselves in the fastnesses of the North; sailors mad with the song of
the sirens. On her quays burned the futile enthusiasm of the Middle Age,
that coveted the Holy City and was overwhelmed in the desert. Through
her streets surged Crusade after Crusade, companies of adventure, lonely
hermits drunken with silence, immense armies of dreamers, the chivalry
of Europe, a host of little children. On her ramparts Columbus dreamed,
and in her seas he fought with the Tunisian galleys before he set sail
westward for El Dorado. And here Andrea Doria beat the Turks and
blockaded his own city and set her free; and S. Catherine Adorni, weary
of the ways of the world, watched the galleons come out of the west, and
prayed to God, and saw the wind over the sea. O beautiful and mysterious
armies, O little children from afar, and thou whose adventurous name
married our world, what cities have you taken, what new love have you
found, what seas have your ships furrowed; whither have you fle