n in Rome; but life is homely and
frugal here, and has few graces. The ways of everyday Italian life in
these grand old places are like nettles and thistles set in an old
majolica vase that has had knights and angels painted on it. You know
what I mean, you who know Italy. Do you remember those pictures of
Vittario Carpacio and of Gentile? They say that is the life our Italy
saw once in her cities and her villas;--that is the life she wants.
Sometimes when you are all alone in these vast deserted places the
ghosts of all that pageantry pass by you, and they seem fitter than the
living people for these courts and halls.

* * *

I had been no saint. I had always been ready for jest or dance or
intrigue with a pretty woman, and sometimes women far above me had cast
their eyes down on the arena as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring to
pick a lover out thence for his strength: but I had never cared. I had
loved, laughed, and wandered away with the stroller's happy liberty; but
I had never cared. Now all at once the whole world seemed dead; dead,
heaven and earth; and only one woman's two eyes left living in the
universe; living, and looking into my soul and burning it to ashes. Do
you know what I mean? No?--ay, then you know not love.

* * *

Sometimes I think love is the darkest mystery of life: mere desire will
not explain it, nor will the passions or the affections. You pass years
amidst crowds, and know naught of it; then all at once you meet a
stranger's eyes, and never are you free. That is love. Who shall say
whence it comes? It is a bolt from the gods that descends from heaven
and strikes us down into hell. We can do nothing.

* * *

In Italy one wants so little; the air and the light, and a little red
wine, and the warmth of the wind, and a handful of maize or of grapes,
and an old guitar, and a niche to sleep in near a fountain that murmurs
and sings to the mosses and marbles--these are enough in Italy.

* * *

Petty laws breed great crimes. Few rulers, little or big, remember that.

* * *

_L'esprit du clocher_ is derided nowadays. But it may well be doubted
whether the age which derides it will give the world anything one-half
as tender and true in its stead. It is peace because it is content; and
it is a peace which has in it the germ of heroism: menaced, it produces
patriotism--the patriotism whose symbol