His voice sounded like a requiem. These successive meetings had made him think of the end of the community of which he was the ridiculous head. First of all, Castro; then, Novoa. Even the Colonel at that very moment was walking up and down in front of a millinery shop waiting for the gardener's little girl. Spadoni was the only one left, but his loyalty counted for little. As far as the latter was concerned, nothing feminine existed except the roulette wheel.
The carriage stopped beyond the Museum of Oceanography, where the San Martino Garden began. Alicia paid the driver.
"We must economize," she said gravely. "We shall return on foot."
They followed a network of winding paths, ascending and descending the gulleys of the slope. The tiny plateaus had been converted into stone lookouts, from which the view embraced an immense expanse of sea. Occasionally at dawn one could distinguish the distant profile of the Mountain of Corsica. Since the gardens were far above the Mediterranean, the horizon line was so high that one seemed to be looking upwards when viewing it. The pine trees rose in slender black colonnades and between the thin trunks one could see the dark Mediterranean suspended like a curtain. Only the murmuring tops of the sharp trees emerged in the diaphanous azure of the skies. Below the vegetation was composed of wild hardy plants breathing out strong odors, plants that were unaffected by the salty exhalations of the sea; prickly pear, lobes of which were surmounted by red fruit; small century plants whose twisted blades intertwined like tentacles of green pulp.
Alicia admired this garden. According to her it was a maritime garden, in harmony with the nearby Museum and the landscape. The trunks of the trees seemed like the masts of ships; the plants amassed at their feet had the radiating enveloping form of the monsters of the ocean depths. Other vegetation of a foreign origin recalled images of warm countries, and of distant parts, filled with odors and swarming with crowds of yellow and copper-colored men. Through the straight trunks of the trees, one could see five schooners, motionless on the horizon with their sails hanging.
A train of smoke followed the evolutions of a slim torpedo boat steaming around the white, timid flock, like a watch dog.
Looking over the stone balconies one could peer into the ocean to enormous depths. The bold red cliff buried itself vertically in the waters darkened by shadows, or took shelter behind landslides of rocks continually surrounded by foam. On one side Cap-Martin advanced, repelling the onrush of the waves, circles of white caps that constantly succeeded one another, rising from the azure meadows; still farther on lay the Italian coast, showing rose-colored through the melancholy afternoon mist, and on the opposite side lay Cap-d'Ail and Cap-Ferrat, above whose backs embossed with the green of the seas, and dotted with the white of the villas—the golden winding sheet, which was to enshroud the dying sun, began to rise.
"Beautiful! very beautiful!"
Alicia displayed a girlish delight. They sat down in view of the sea, slowly drinking in the vibrant calm, in which mingled the trembling of the pines, the deep churning of the invisible foam, the breath of the azure plain, and the rustling of the earth, grazed by rosaries of ants, by chains of caterpillars, and by the busy work of the black beetle, and at the same time deeply stirred by the awakening of the roots.
From time to time human footsteps sounded on the sand of the winding path. They came from invalids or convalescents who were passing through the gardens on coming out of the Museum; people from Monaco returning to their homes after having taken the sun on a bench; fat housewives who kept their knitting in a bag; old men leaning on canes, who perhaps had never gone to sea, but who looked like old Genoese sailors. Also a few pairs of lovers passed slowly. They would appear at a turning of the path with their arms around each other's waists, silent, looking at each other, and observing that there was another couple on the bench, they unclasped, and suddenly pretended to be carrying on a conversation. As soon as possible they gained the nearest turning to resume their tender entwining, not without having first greeted the Prince and the Duchess with a smile, as though they saw in them another pair of lovers.