o
Rome from the Babylonian captivity, while the other murdered eight of
his Cardinals close by, and threw their bodies into the sea. This is the
quarter of booty, the booty of the Crusaders, and it is in such a place
and in the older part of the town near Piazza Sarzano and in the narrow
ways behind the Exchange that, as I think, Genoa seems most herself, the
port of the Mediterranean, the gate of Italy. Yet what I prefer in Genoa
are her triumphant slums, then the palaces and villas with their
bigness, so impressive for us who came from the North, which seem to be
a remnant of Roman greatness, a vision as it were of solidity and
grandeur. Something of this, it is true, haunts almost every Italian
city; only nowhere but in Genoa can you see so many palaces together,
whole streets of them, huge, overwhelming, and yet beautiful houses,
that often seem deserted, as though they belonged to a greater and more
splendid age than ours.

It is altogether another aspect of these splendid buildings that you see
from the ramparts towards Nervi, from the height of the Via Corsica or
from the hills. From there, with the whole strength and glory of the sea
before you, these palaces, which in the midst of the city are so
indestructible and immortal, seem flowerlike, full of delicate hues,
fragile and almost as though about to fade; you think of hyacinths, of
the blossom of the magnolia, of the fleeting lilac, and the lily that
towers in the moonlight to fall at dawn. Returning to the city in the
twilight with all this passing and fragile glory in your eyes, it is
again another emotion that you receive when, on entering the city, you
find yourself caught in the immense crowd of working people flocking
homewards or to Piazza Deferrari, to the cafes, through the narrow
streets, amid swarms of children, laughing, running, gesticulating or
fighting with one another. From the roofs where they seem to live, from
the high narrow windows, the warren of houses that would be hovels in
the North, but here in the sun are picturesque, women look down lazily
and cry out, with a shrillness peculiar to Genoa, to their friends in
the street. It is a bath of multitude that you are compelled to take,
full of a sort of pungent, invigorating, tonic strength, life crowding
upon you and thrusting itself under your notice without ceremony or
announcement. If on the 2nd November you chance to be in Genoa, you will
find the same insatiable multitude eagerly floc