North Italian Folk: Sketches of Town and Country Life

								

the Tramontana can blow grimly enough if the sun can shine also,
from loggias on hills that look towards the sunrise, from the walls
of tall ramparts that hang over the waves and see the best glory of
the sunsets, from every open place, from every nook and corner, more
recollections crowd around the first picture of the city’s whole. The
steep salite that are paved with red bricks up the middle, the dark
cypress standing against churches, the scent of limes and acacias,
the growth of arbutus and horse-chestnut, all come telling some little
story of the past. Yet, perhaps, most of all, Genoa’s gardens recall
the best of Genoa’s life, because they are the most bound up with her
holiday life—with her Saints and fasts and feast days—for the Ligurians
make merry on most of these occasions, and the Acquasola is the way
to and from many a sanctuary. And Genoa is full of gardens. Private
gardens upon the hill-sides or upon terraces that appear suddenly in
the streets, where flowers grow in boxes, and orange and oleander trees
bloom in pots as in the free earth—gardens that are open to the public
but are none the less rich in all that nature can lavish, gardens that
spring at unexpected turns in the town’s heart to break the monotony
of the palaces. Some of them have restaurants in their midst, and
there, among Japanese medlar-trees with great fibrous leaves, beneath
acanthus and willow and magnolia trees, people dine or sip coffee and
ices in the company of marble nymphs and heroes, of shivering cupids
who toss the water from stone fountains. But the public promenade is
the garden that tells most about the town people’s public life, for
to the Acquasola people are wont to go to walk and drive, and meet
their acquaintance, and show off new dresses and new equipages. It
is the place in which to spend a holiday afternoon. The broad walks
are crowded with people, who wander beneath acacia and arbutus trees;
fine ladies with attendant cavaliers, mothers of the middle class
chaperoning their marriageable daughters, fathers carrying their
children that the women may have leisure to enjoy the festa dress and
the festa scene; along the drive and the sycamore and horse-chestnut
avenues carriages roll smoothly with gay people. Flower-vendors are
there, and men and women with Madonnette to sell, or filbert-strings
or iced-drinks and wafers. Sometimes a group saunters away to the
higher gardens, where the paths wind upward, till they reach a terrace
with flowers and palms and trees from foreign lands. The whole town
lies spread beneath; towers and palaces and domes seem to grow softer
of outline as evening lights creep around. In the far foreground lies
the great valley of the Bisagno, where troops have camped—Zouaves and
Africans in gorgeous dress. It is a long stretch of dusty road and arid
river-bed, but from the Acquasola none of this is to be seen, and there