"A cheerful state of things," remarked Batiscombe, "when the whole crop does not suffice to pay the taxes on the soil!"
"N'est-ce pas?" said Marcantonio. "Well, I provided for the poor old man, but he died in the winter. It broke his heart."[1]
"I love the Italians," said Batiscombe; "but their ideas of economy are peculiar. I suppose that without much metaphor or exaggeration one might say that the poor crétin's bushel of corn is gone into that ridiculous ironclad over there."
"But of course it is," said Marcantonio. "The whole thing probably paid for one rivet. You, who write books, Monsieur Batiscombe, put that into a book and render it very pathetic."
"It needs little rendering to make it that," said Batiscombe, and he looked at Leonora's eyes that were not yet dry.
By this time the royal marionettes had been bundled off to their boats, and the crowd of small craft on the water began to disperse. Batiscombe's six men fell to their oars and the boat shot out from the breakwater. Presently they hoisted the bright lateen sails to the breeze. Batiscombe perched himself on the weather rail, and took the tiller, as the brave little craft heeled over and began to cut the water. The wind fanned Leonora's cheek, and she said it was delightful.
Batiscombe suggested that they should run into one of the great green caves that honeycomb the cliffs near Sorrento, and make it their dining-room. So away they went, rejoicing to be out of the heat and the noise. It was twelve o'clock, and far up among the orange groves the little church bells rang out their midday chime, laughing together in the white belfries for joy of the sunshine and the fair summer's day.
"I should like to be always sailing," said Leonora, who had now quite forgotten her woes and enjoyed the change.
"Ma chère," said her husband, "there is nothing simpler."
"You always say that," she answered rather reproachfully; "but this is the very first time I have been on the water since we came."