“After you left me, I sat down to sketch in a little terraced garden, shaded by fig-trees and vines. My sketch was nearly finished, and I was thinking how I should overtake you, when a bright-eyed young maiden came up, and, with the childlike wonder of a race of people living far out of the track of sketching tourists, asked me ‘what I was doing.’
“‘Sit down, pretty maiden, and you shall see.’
“She obeyed with a naïve simplicity, and we soon prattled away, she telling me that she had never gone beyond the neighbouring villages, and could not understand how I should come so far from Inghilterra, a country she had never heard of, to draw pictures of their wild mountains.
“‘Ah! you cannot comprehend how it is that I love your wild mountains, and children of nature like yourself.’
“‘Will you come again?’—a question put with a spice of espièglerie which, from some other pretty lips, would be rather flattering. ‘Yes, you will come again, and I shall be grown up.’
“She did not seem, I found, quite pleased at being called ‘mon enfant’ by a young stranger, though it was all very well from her uncle, who, I learnt, was the priest of the church in my sketch. Presently, away she ran, blushing and smiling, to tell her uncle that there was a traveller come from a far-off land who must be hungry, and who must eat and rest under their roof.
“The good priest received me with much empressement, having been brought out to meet me by the little Graziella, as I was following the path to the cottage door.
“‘Ah! you are English, you are a Protestant, no doubt. It matters not; the stranger is welcome under my humble roof were he a Jew or a Turk. We are all brothers.’
“I found the priest well informed on English affairs, into which, and matters connected with them, we soon plunged. Meanwhile, Graziella, with the assistance of a hard-faced but kindly old crone, prepared a repast of fruits, eggs, coffee; and the priest brought out a bottle of wine, the produce of his own vineyard, which I have seldom found equalled. It was all very appetising. I only wished you were there.”—
“I was just then, curiously enough, indoctrinating Antoine, nothing loath, with the priest's sentiment of universal brotherhood, a simple Gospel truth, which, overlaid with ecclesiastical systems, never took deep root, and is sadly out of vogue now-a-days. I imagine we shall find the Sards far more bigoted than their neighbours here.”