Dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around.
"No! I have no time to waste on the Duke di Nespoli and his collection," he repeated aloud, as if to confirm his resolution.
He frowned at the old woman, bronzed by sun and wind, with a basket of ricotta on her head, as she proffered the delicacy with a traditional, snarling call. "See! this is the good ricotta, made by the shepherds of Maremma. Fresh? Altro! Try it, ladies and gentlemen."
He shook his head at the book-vender, a patriarch with silvery beard and hair, and aquiline features, blanched by long winters in the shadow of some palace gateway of an inland city to the tint of those copies of Dante and Orlando Furioso, bound in shrivelled vellum, which he praised as he pushed his little cart beneath the hotel balcony.
He remained obdurate to the coaxing entreaties of the dusky boy from Volterra, with alabaster for sale, snowy white when fashioned into slender cup and vase, or golden as amber when carved into the semblance of Pisa's leaning shaft as it appears glorified by the sun of a summer noonday.
He tossed a soldo to poor, daft Cecco, who might have been a sea-monster just risen from the clinging weeds and coral of the adjacent wave, if he did not grin like an ape, as the coin was caught, thus evincing appreciation of the value of money, even in a rudimentary intelligence.
Before the spectator the blue sea extended to a pure horizon which still retained the soft, opalescent hue of dawn, and revealed the islands of Caprera and Elba in the distance, like faint clouds. In the offing a ship of war rode at anchor, decked with bunting for a festa, while fishing-craft slid into the little port, freighted with sardine and anchovy, the sails catching ruddy reflections as they were furled. On the beach the straw huts of the bathing-season, which so much resemble the wig-wams of certain aboriginal tribes, were being linked together where later ladies would gossip, children play, lovers wax jealous, and the envious sting beneath the thatched roofs, with perpetual splashing into the waves, and a tumult of noise incomprehensible to the Northern races, unused to laugh, scold, and weep in a breath.
On the right hand rose the Carrara mountains, their serrated peaks sharply defined against the sky, and thence merging in softer curves to the promontory which shelters the Bay of Spezia. On the left the line of arid shore revealed the city of Leghorn at the next bend, and swept on to fever-haunted Maremma, and the monotonous waste of Campagna, marked by an occasional watch-tower, where listless guards perform their dreary routine of duty near salt-works.
Dr. Weisener knew and loved the land. He cherished the site of ancient Luna in the Spezian Gulf above the charms of Lerici and Porto Venere, basking in golden sunshine. The coast beyond Livorno signified to him the port of once famous Populonia, fitting sea-gateway to Volterra on the height. Ostia offered attractions above the Sorrento cliff, Isehia, and Capri.
