“Why does the sky do like that?” asked the second boy, vigorously blinking his great eyes. With straight black hair and an odd, serious little countenance, square-jawed and long upper-lipped like a Medici out of Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes, he was the most mediæval-looking of all the children. We loved that four-year-old.... He has grown up, we hear, “impossible” and a burden to his family. We cannot help feeling it must be the family’s fault. The elder boy, much handsomer though he was, did not then promise so well. A terribly nervous child; the cry “Ho paura,” was always on his lips. It hurt his grandfather’s pride that any son of his race should show such degenerate timidity.
One typical scene we were witness of. The little fellow, in great awe of the peremptory, loud-voiced old sportsman, approached him to say good-night; and, hanging his head after the manner of the frightened child, stammered the requisite “Bonsoir, Bonpapa,” almost inaudibly.
Instantly wrath broke out over him. ‹Bonpapa’s temper had not improved with the gout.› “That was not the manner in which to say good-night.”—“A man was to look up: to speak straight.” “What does one say?” he ended, shouting.
“Pardon!” cried the poor, terrified imp, with a wail.
This child, over whom were so many head-shakings, doubts and laments, has grown up so brave and fine a boy that it would have rejoiced the heart of the old Vicomte to see him now. His was a stormy heart that wanted much of life, and therefore, of course, knew much bitterness. It is stilled now, alas! this many a year.
A CASTELLO IN LOMBARDY
From this comparatively modern mansion in the Piedmont we went to an old, old castle in the plains of Lombardy. The chronicles have it that Barbarossa besieged it. It was approached through a considerable village—one of great antiquity, and still retaining the lines of the Roman castrum, with all its streets parallel or at right-angles. At the top of the main of these the great machicolated entrance of the Castello, with its faded frescoes across the arch, was very impressive in mediæval strength. The church shouldered one corner of the immense pile of outer wall; and each side of the moat, between the towers, inside and out, peasant houses had crept.
The Castello itself, of extreme antiquity, as has been said, formed two sides of a square, round, and flagged courtyard. The garden ran sheer up the hill, within the tower-flanked walls of the outer bailey. There were vineyards inside; and outside, where the ground fell away, the whole land was likewise covered with vines. They ran up and down long ridges, like petrified waves, as far as the eye could see. And in the far, far distance, almost lost in the horizon, were the Alps.
What a view that was from the loopholes of those half-ruined towers—especially at sunset, when there gathered a rosy mist over that curious, wild-tossing expanse!