“Where is she from?”
“Oh, far away!” he replied with a vague gesture.
The Italian asked no more; but his face betrayed excitement.
Their road had begun to rise and to be overshadowed by trees. After a while they reached the ruined house built up against the rock, and they alighted to rest, or look about them.
The German exclaimed: “Did you ever see such a green atmosphere! I do not think that you will find such a pine-steeped dimness even in your Italy, Loredan.”
Beside the house a small stream of water from the heights dropped into a trough. Dropping, it twisted itself into a rope. Overflowing the trough, it rippled along beside the road they were to follow.
Pierre drank, washed his face and hands, and watered his donkey. The three travelers went to look at the house. Everything betokened desertion and ruin. The door and shutter hung half off their hinges, and only an upper shutter was closed. A stone stair went up from the one room below; but a heap of brushwood on it barred the passage.
They pursued their way; and as they went, the scene softened. A narrow space of rising grassy land, planted with olive-trees, interposed between them and the rocks, which only here and there thrust out a rude sentinel; and their road, having risen gradually to the house in the pines, began to descend as gradually. The afternoon sun had been excluded; but now it shone across their way. Olive-trees quite replaced the pines, and allowed glimpses of an illuminated landscape to be seen between their crisped-up leaves. They rounded a curve and entered the village. At their right, under thick olives that hid all above them, grassy terraces rose to the castle; at their left were the farms with great white houses sunk in luxuriant vegetation.
The travelers were enchanted. It was a picture! It was a paradise!
Pierre conducted them to his house, and the whole family came out to welcome them with a rustic frankness and an urban courtesy. There was the mother of their host, a woman of eighty, his wife, two tall boys, a girl and a baby. From the roof terrace another girl parted the long palm-leaves to peep down at them.