needs. The former inmates' cells, wherein the brown-robed brethren
of the Order of St Francis until lately were wont to pass their placid
uneventful lives, afford comfortable if somewhat limited accommodation;
whilst the covered _loggia_ that runs the whole length of the cells has
been turned into a series of delightful little sitting-rooms, their broad
arc-shaped windows facing full south, a boon that only a winter resident
in Italy can properly appreciate. _Dove non entra il sole, entra il
medico_, is a hackneyed but well-proven adage; consequently here in the
old Capuchin convent the services of the local medicine-man ought rarely
to be required. Signor Vozzi's guests partake of their meals in the
ancient refectory, a large bare echoing chamber with a vaulted ceiling,
which still contains the old stone pulpit from which in more pious days a
grave brother was wont to read aloud choice passages from the works of the
early Fathers of the Church or of St Bonaventura, the Seraphic Doctor of
the Franciscans, during the hours allotted to the frugal repasts of the
friars. But the public rooms and the cool white-washed corridors do not
present such attractions as the glorious garden with its famous _pergola_
and its views of the Bay. Here even in Christmas week we found quantities
of plants in full bloom: the delicate yellow blossoms of the Soffrana
rose; trailing ivy-leaved geraniums with gay heads of carmine flowers; the
honey-scented budleia with its little globes of dark yellow flowerets:
clumps of gorgeous scarlet salvia; and straggling masses of the pretty
cosmia, red, pink and white. Humming-bird hawk-moths darted hither and
thither in the sunshine, restless little creatures whose wings are never
for a moment still, as they poise gracefully over each separate blossom in
turn. The _pergola_ itself, which every artist at Amalfi paints as a
matter of course, generally with a Capuchin friar--at least a friar _pro
hac vice_--or a pretty dark-eyed damsel in the native costume, sitting in
the foreground, was certainly bare of foliage, we admit, for even in the
soft warm air of the Bay of Salerno the grape-vine wisely refuses to burst
into leaf at Yuletide, no matter how enticing the warmth. But the thick
white pillars and their wooden cross-beams, around which are entwined the
leafless coiling limbs of the sleeping vine, throw dark blue patterns of
chequered shadow upon the sunlit ground. Above the terraced garden rises
the ora