Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"Why do you care so much for that marble figure?"

"I do not think she is quite marble," answered Margaret, smiling. "When I look at her, after a while she becomes, in a certain sense, responsive. To me she is like a dear friend."

Another week passed, and another. And now the blossoms of the fruit-trees—a cloud of pink and snowy white—were gone, and the winter loiterers on the sunny shore began to talk of home; or, if they were travellers who had but stopped awhile on the way to Italy, they knew now that the winds of the Apennines no longer chilled the beautiful streets of Florence, and that all the lilies were out.

"Why could it not go on and on forever? Why must there always come that last good-bye?" quoted Mrs. Clary.

"Because life is so sad," said Margaret.

"But I like to look forward," said Janet.

"We shall meet again," said Lloyd.

"The world," I remarked, sagely, "is composed of three classes of persons—those who live in the present, those who live in the past, and those who live in the future. The first class is the wisest."

Our last excursion was to Sant' Agnese. This little mountain village was the highest point we attained on our donkeys, being two thousand two hundred feet above the sea. Its one rugged little street, cut in the side of the cliff, had an ancient weather-beaten little church at one end and a lonely chapel at the other, with the village green in the centre—a "green" which was but a smooth rock amphitheatre, with a parapet protecting it from the precipice below. From this "green" there was a grand view of the mountains, with the sharp point of the Aiguille towering above them all. It was a village fête day, and we met the little procession at the church door. First came the priests and choir-boys, chanting; then the village girls, dressed in white, and bearing upon a little platform an image of Saint Agnes; then youths with streamers of colored ribbons on their arms; and, last, all the villagers, two and two, dressed in their best, and carrying bunches of flowers. Through the winding rocky street they marched, singing as they went. When they arrived at the lonely chapel, Saint Agnes was borne in, and prayers were offered, in which the village people joined, kneeling on the ground outside, since there was not place for them within. Then forth came Saint Agnes again, a hymn was started, in which all took part, the little church bell pealed, and an old man touched off small heaps of gunpowder placed at equal distances along the parapet, their nearest approach, I suppose, to cannon. When the saint had reached her shrine again in safety, her journeyings over until the next year, the procession dissolved, and feasting began, the simple feasting of Italy, in which we joined so far as to partake of a lunch in the little inn, which had a green bush as a sign over the narrow door—the "wine of the country" proving very good, however, in spite of the old proverb. Then, refreshed, we climbed up the steep path leading to the peak where was perched the ruin of the old castle which is so conspicuous from Mentone, high in the air. This castle, the so-called "Saracen stronghold" of Sant' Agnese, pronounced, as Baker said, "either Frenchy to rhyme with lace, or Italianly to rhyme with lazy," seemed to me higher up in the sky than I had ever expected to be in the flesh.