After some stay at Turin we visited Genoa; passing the month of November there, during which I was bitten by mosquitos over the face in a manner expressive of small-pox.
LX.
The most pleasurable recollection of this period was a day spent at Nervi, ten miles from Genoa on the Riviera Levante.
The lovely bay of Nervi, on a sunny day, is enriched with every colour: the steep shores of black, veined with white, a magnesian limestone, worn by the waves into waves; the blue waters breaking over projecting rocks, curdling into white, while pools of foamy green fill the basins. It was here that I collected my colours and ideas for “The Painter” in “New Symbols,” which I wrote on returning to Genoa, a place not so attractive as some Italian cities, though the Palazzo Rosso, with its art collection, is never to be forgotten.
There is no sea coast worth visiting at Genoa, scarcely a bathing place; all occupied and spoilt by fortifications. Nevertheless we wandered among the vineyards and villas, our eyes doing honour to the one that had belonged to Paganini.
On a descending road we walked along a festooned vineyard, regarding the ripe fruit with longing eyes, for it was sultry weather, and our great contribution to it was thirst. At the bottom of the hill was a fruiterer’s shop, where a barrowful of grapes had just arrived, and we gained permission to eat. Our thirst was slaked and we asked what we owed in payment; it was a few coppers, and we took from our pockets at random, a good half-dozen times the amount demanded. For such small pay, we witnessed a rapture such as no stage exhibits.
On reaching the streets of the city we encountered a crowd, in the midst of which two men, a large and a small one, were wrestling in an agony of rage. The big man suddenly wrested a knife from the hand of the little one, and flung it far from him, pointing at it in triumphant scorn.
The little man, all over in a fury that actor never attained to, rushed to his house close by, imploring his wife, who was at the door, to give him another knife; but she refused, so the fight was over.