olored glass. It is then, when
standing alone in the midst of the dunes, that one feels a sense
almost of fear, as if one were in an unknown country hopelessly
separated from any inhabited land, and one looks anxiously at the
misty horizon for the shadow of a building to reassure him.

In the whole of my walk I met but one or two peasants. The Dutch
peasants usually speak to the people they meet on the road--a rare
thing in a Northern country. Some pull off their caps at the side with
a curious gesture, as if they did it for a joke. Usually they say
"Good-morning" or "Good-evening" without looking at the person they
are greeting. If they meet two people, they say, "Good-evening to you
both," or if more than two, "Good-evening to you all." On a pathway in
the middle of the first dunes I saw several of those poor fishermen
who spend the whole day up to their waists in water, picking up the
shells that are used to make a peculiar cement or to spread over
garden-paths instead of sand. It must cost them at least half an hour
of hard labor to take off the enormous leather boots that they wear to
go into the sea; this would give an excuse to an Italian sailor for
swearing by all the saints. But these men, on the contrary, perform
the task with a composure that makes one sleepy, without giving way to
any movement of impatience, nor would they raise their heads until
they had finished even if a cannon were to be fired off.

On the dunes, near a stone obelisk recording the return of William of
Orange from England after the fall of the French dominion, I saw for
the first time one of those sunsets which awaken in us Italians a
feeling of wonder no less than that awakened in people from the North
by the sunsets at Naples and Rome. The sun, because of the refraction
of light by the mists which always fill the air in Holland, is greatly
magnified, and diffuses through the clouds and on the sea a veiled and
tremulous splendor like the reflection of a great fire. It seemed as
if another sun had unexpectedly appeared on the horizon, and was
setting, never again to show itself on earth. A child might well have
believed the words of a poet who said, "In Holland the sun dies," and
the most cold-blooded man must have allowed a farewell to escape his
lips.

As I have spoken of my walk to Scheveningen, I will mention two other
pleasant excursions that I made from the Hague last winter.

The first was to the village of Naaldwijk, and from