w you lies Rapallo
in the crook of the bay among the oleanders and vines. It is there you
must sleep, far away still from those visionary peaks, which yet will in
some strange way give you a sense of security, as though a legion of
bright angels, ghosts in the pale night (for they fade away in the
twilight), invisible to other men, were on guard to keep you from all
harm. Somehow it is always into a dreamless sleep one falls in Rapallo,
that beautiful and guarded place behind Portofino, where the sea is like
a lake, so still it is, and all the flowers of the world seem to have
run for shelter. It is as though one had seen the Holy City, and though
it was still far off, it was enough, one was content.

[Illustration: ON THE ROAD]

Rapallo itself, as you find on your first morning, is beautiful, chiefly
by reason of its sea-girt tower. The old castle is a prison, and the
town itself, full of modern hotels, is yet brisk with trade in oil and
lace; but it is not these things that will hold you there, but that
sea-tower and the joy of the woods and gardens. And then there are some
surprising things not far away. Portofino, for instance, with its great
pine and the ilex woods, its terraced walk and the sea, not the lake of
Rapallo, but the sea itself, full of strength and wisdom. Then there
is San Fruttuoso, with its convent among the palm trees by the seashore,
whither the Doria are still brought by sea for burial. Here they lie,
generation on generation, of the race which loved the sea; almost
coffined in the deep, for the waves break upon the floor of the crypt
that holds them. They could not lie more fitly than on the shore of this
sea they won and held for Genoa. San Fruttuoso is difficult to reach
save by sea. In the summer the path from Portofino is pleasant enough,
but at any other time it is almost impassable. And indeed the voyage by
boat from Rapallo to Portofino, and thence to San Fruttuoso, should be
chosen, for the beauty of the coast, which, as I think, can nowhere be
seen so well and so easily as here. Then, in returning to Portofino, the
road along the coast should be followed through Cervara, where Guido,
the friend of Petrarch and founder of the convent, lies buried, where
Francis I, prisoner of Charles V, was wind-bound, to S. Margherita, the
sister-town of Rapallo, and thence through S. Michele di Pagana, where
you may see a spoiled Vandyck, to Rapallo. Who may speak of all the
splendid valleys and garde