And at first she hardly listened to what was being read. The voice displeased her. It was too emphatic—she disliked its tremolo, its deep bass vibrations. Surely one should read more simply!
Then the first impression passed away altogether. She looked up—her eyes fastened themselves on the reader—her lips parted—the smile changed.
* * * * *
What the full over-rich voice was calling up before her was a little morning scene, as Virgil might have described it, passing in the hut of a Latian peasant farmer, under Tiberius.
It opened with the waking at dawn of the herdsman Cæculus and his little son, in their round thatched cottage on the ridge of Aricia, beneath the Alban Mount. It showed the countryman stepping out of his bed into the darkness, groping for the embers on the hearth, re-lighting his lamp, and calling first to his boy asleep on his bed of leaves, then to their African servant, the negro slave-girl with her wide mouth, her tight woolly hair. One by one the rustic facts emerged, so old, so ever new:—Cæculus grinding his corn, and singing at his work—the baking of the flat wheaten cakes on the hot embers—the gathering of herbs from the garden—the kneading them with a little cheese and oil to make a relish for the day—the harnessing of the white steers under the thonged yoke—the man going forth to his ploughing, under the mounting dawn, clad in his goatskin tunic and his leathern hat,—the boy loosening the goats from their pen beside the hut, and sleepily driving them past the furrows where his father was at work, to the misty woods beyond.
With every touch, the earlier world revived, grew plainer in the sun, till the listener found herself walking with Manisty through paths that cut the Alban Hills in the days of Rome's first imperial glory, listening to his tale of the little goatherd, and of Nemi.
* * * * *
'So the boy—Quintus—left the ploughed lands, and climbed a hill above the sleeping town. And when he reached the summit, he paused and turned him to the west.
'The Latian plain spreads beneath him in the climbing sun; at its edge is the sea in a light of pearl; the white fishing-boats sparkle along the shore. Close at his feet runs a straight road high upon the hill. He can see the country folk on their laden mules and donkeys journeying along it, journeying northwards to the city in the plain that the spurs of the mountain hide from him. His fancy goes with them, along the Appian Way, trotting with the mules. When will his father take him again to Rome to see the shops, and the Forum, and the new white temples, and Cæsar's great palace on the hill?
'Then carelessly his eyes pass southward, and there beneath him in its hollow is the lake—the round blue lake that Diana loves, where are her temple and her shadowy grove. The morning mists lie wreathed above it; the just-leafing trees stand close in the great cup; only a few patches of roof and column reveal the shrine.