The harvest is over; the earth,
bronzed by the summer heat, is resting after her labour and nature is
making variations in the ochres and umbers that in spring were half
hidden, huddled together in the steep places where nothing will flourish;
the stubble shows in lines of pale yellow on the brown earth among
patches of almost colourless green and other patches black with burning
which change the value of the olives, pistachios, carubas and aloes; here
and there is a shrivelled thistle, here and there a lone pine; sometimes
we see a string of mules winding in and out on its way home, losing and
finding itself among the undulations like a little fleet of fishing boats
that rise and fall with the swell, and I think Schubert must have passed
this way when he felt stirring within him the mellow loveliness of the
second Entr'acte to _Rosamunde_:

[Picture: Rosamunde]

We need not choose one or the other, we need only wait to have both; for
spring is the modulation to the dominant, the awakening, the going out in
search of adventure, while autumn is the return to the tonic, the coming
home in search of repose, the falling asleep; the first leads to the
second as naturally as youth leads to age.

Last time Gigino and I went to Trabonella it was spring, and we took with
us his young brother Michelino, aged thirteen, who had never been there
before. We arrived in the afternoon and found Beppe, who took us round,
and we showed Michelino the works. Empty trucks were gliding down a
sloping railway into the mine, while others were gliding up filled with
the harvest of the deep. We saw the broken pieces of rock being put into
great furnaces and we watched the treacly sulphur that was melted out of
the pores and came oozing through a tap into a mould. It is then
purified and made into shapes like candles, and I thought of Kentish
giants handling such bars of sulphur to fumigate the hops in the glow of
an oast-house fire. We introduced Michelino to the overseers, directors
and managers and to the doctor. We returned to the hut where Beppe
lives, and dined out of doors in the yard behind. It all seemed to me
very healthy and like the accounts one reads and the illustrations one
sees of life in a new country, with the advantage that Caltanissetta is
only about eight kilometres away. But Beppe objected that the nearness
of Caltanissetta was no advantage because it induces a feeling of "Well,
it doesn'