North Italian Folk: Sketches of Town and Country Life

								

THE HUSBANDMAN                                 „            114
GOSSIP                                         „            170
THE PARISH PRIEST                              „            182
IL SIGNOR CAPPELLANO                           „            194
THE VILLAGE SEMPSTRESS                         „            210
THE LOVE-LETTER                                „            246
IN VILLEGGIATURA                               „            266

HALF-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.



                                                             PAGE
THE CARNIVAL                                                 15
ON-LOOKERS AT THE PROCESSION OF PALMS                        37
MARKETING                                                    44
THE SERVANT WENCH                                            49
SHOPMAN AND PURCHASER                                        62
LA PETTINATRICE IN AN OMNIBUS                                70
PAOLO AT SEA                                                 81
VIEW OF SANTA MARGHERITA                                     89
THE MARQUIS AND HIS HOUSEKEEPER                             122
FLIRTATION AT PEGLI                                         131
IN THE FIELDS AT SAVIGNONE                                  142
GATHERING THE CHESTNUTS                                     161
THE PRIEST’S SERVANT ADMINISTERING A REPROOF                188
BIANCA DECORATES THE ALTAR AND SNUBS THE UNDER PRIEST       202
NETTINA RETURNING FROM THE WELL                             226
THE VILLAGE SWAIN AT A BARGAIN                              237
VIRGINIA GOES TO CONFIRMATION                               259
THE PROCESSION OF THE CORPUS DOMINI                         279

Part One
On the Riviera

Genoa.

Spring returns. In northern lands, where much work is done and living
is hard, our skies are yet grey and the winds blow keen while the
earth is hard with the late frosts. Yet almond blossoms bloom sweetly
in scant little gardens or beside the bleak walls of town houses, and
spring begins to bud even in the lands where spring’s struggle is the
longest, and as I watch her oncoming and rejoice in her tender-toned
early flowers, I must needs remember the home where her life is the
fairest and merriest, and her sunlight the stronger to play and be
played with. It is the Mediterranean that I call to mind, her winds
and waves and sails and rocks, her shores, towers, villages, groves—the
light and colour on her kindly people’s life. And most of all, as the
sunshine grows and the air gets whiter, memory paints again for me that
whitest, but not newest of towns, where winds and waves and groves and
all are fair, the city of marble—la Superba—Genoa, the Queen of the
Riviera. Genoa, no longer the great republic, no longer the city of
much merchandise and wealth, but Genoa, the city of palaces still.