‘Well,’ observed the Poet, ‘I confess that an earnest desire to be indulgent to whatever is human has never succeeded in eradicating the feeling that gambling is the lowest of all human diversions; and, though here you need neither share nor even see it unless you wish, it seems to me to cast its ignoble shadow over the entire place, and to dethrone it from the majestic position with which Nature originally invested it. It has infected the architecture, vulgarised the sea-front, corrupted the very air, and exercised a malefic influence on manners.’
‘And it has certainly spoilt the looks of the men and women,’ said Lamia. ‘I never saw so many ugly people as round those fascinating tables.’
‘Gambling would make any one ugly,’ said Veronica.
‘Then I will never gamble,’ said Lamia.
‘Let us leave this,’ I ventured to suggest, ‘and sit among the flower-beds, somewhat too artificial though I allow they are.’
‘They look combed and curled,’ said Lamia. ‘I am sure I am quite as natural as they are.’
‘Dante had so exhaustive an imagination,’ observed the Poet, when we had shifted our position, ‘that it is not easy to suggest any form of repugnant penalty not to be met with in the Divine Comedy. But I think what is colloquially called a Hell might be added to his repulsive Circles. What Lamia said just now is strikingly true. The place has a malign effect on people’s appearance. Look at those respectable persons—for I am sure they are such—trying to appear almost the reverse. Great-granddaughters of the Pilgrim Fathers are collected here, just as cold no doubt as their grandmothers, but striving to seem otherwise. Looking back to those years when I first wandered along this lovely region, when this place had neither existence nor name, I cannot but regret the simplicity that has passed away. Nor can I think it is well for the idlers of material civilisation to parade their opulent ennui before a primitive people whom they will probably end by infecting with their restlessness and their discontent.‘
‘I can see,’ said Lamia, ‘this is my first and last visit to this vicious Circle.’
‘Come, then,’ he answered, rising, and we all did the same, ‘and see how unnecessarily intolerant one can be, and how narrow is the slip of territory that modern pleasures have filched from peasant life and rustic toil. In a few minutes we shall be among the olive woods. Are we not there already? See! bare-headed women are washing the clothes of their husbands and children in the Grima. Look there, beyond! The goats are clambering up the precipitous slopes, and browsing on the myrtle. What now do we behold through sunny openings in dense dark foliage? Meditating mountains and laughing sea. Let us recant all we have said. There is room enough in this large world for everybody, and manifestly quite enough for us. Man has wrung from Nature a slight concession along the coast, but here, as everywhere, the Hinterland belongs to Heaven.’
There was little exaggeration in the words. An ascent as easy as it was brief carried us beyond the sights and sounds of what Veronica had, with just alliteration, stigmatised as ‘cosmopolitan canaille,’ and shortly we were sitting on myrtle-cushioned boulders, and gazing out, through gaps in the silvery foliage of the olive-trees, at a sea unchanged since the days when Hercules is reputed to have traversed it.