South Wind

all veneration, for artistic effects. The beauty of a man's character moved him more strongly than the beauty of any picture or any landscape. Yet, on arriving next afternoon at the u

a dazzling spot! The subtle influence of the sea, though it lay four hundred feet lower down, was ever present; one felt oneself on an

deep soil, borne down by the rains of unnumbered centuries from the heights overhead and enabling those shady oaks, poplars, walnuts and apples to shoot up to uncommon size and luxuriance and screen away the sunny beams. From above, meanwhile, a perennial shower d

quaint old citadel which, before his day, could only be reached b a rough mule-track easily defended against invaders. After constructing a fine road of access with many twists and turnings, wide enough to admit the passage of two of his roomy state carriages driving abreast, he turned his mind to other improvements. Professing to be an admirer of the good old times, he decided to keep up its traditional characte

at a time "with a view to ensuring good results," to those of the native women who had hitherto failed to produce offspring. The system worked well. With some trifling but reprehensive fluctuations, the birth-rate and the death-rate remained even; things were at a standstill; a fact which caused His Highness to be compared, by a courtly panegyrist, to Joshua who bade the sun arrest his march across the heavens. Another of these gent

of taste and a decorist where picturesque effects were concerned, decreed that the entire place-walls, houses, the two convents (Benedictine and Carthusian), the church, and even stables and pigsties-was to be painted a uniform pink: "pink," he ordained,

t was good. He had created a gem. The Old

n. Men forsook the place-all save the peasantry who tilled the surrounding fields. Towers and battlements crumbled to earth; roadways heaved uneasily with grassy tufts that sprouted in the chinks of the old paving-blocks. Sometimes at decline of day a creaking hay-waggon would lumber along, bending towards a courtyard in whose moss-grown recesses you discerned stacks of golden

ared; only five-storey hotels and suchlike; the notion of casting herself down from one of those artificial eminences did not appeal to her high-strung temperament; she craved to die like Sappho, her ideal. An architect was despatched, the ground purchased, the house built and furnished. That done, she settled up her affairs in France and established herself at Mon Repos. On the evening of her arrival she climbed the little height at the back of her domain and looked southward, down a sheer w

espects to her had she not expired a good many years before his arrival on the island. And he, of course, got it from Eames who, as annotator of Perrelli's ANTIQUITIES, was in the habit of garnering old details anent private h

ttle place, surrounded by three or four chestnut trees and a rose garden. A steep incline at the back of the property ended, abruptly, in air. He concluded that the precipice must be on the other side of that slope and that, if so, it

and brown skin. Tousled grey hair, like that of a Skye terrier, hung over her forehead, half concealing a pair

ht. "This must be the

I wonder if sh

or perhaps his kindly face disposed her in

cts and, despite his youth, was already a little weary of tossing about the world. He envied his cousin's happy married life. Would such an existence ever fall to his own lot? Although, like himself, she was only a bird of passage on Nepenthe, she had succeeded in impres

man seemed unwilling or unable to give him any information as to her whereabouts. After waiting an hour, he scribbled a short note, left it o

d, contemplative frame of mind, once more drew nigh the pink ra

of the road, convenient for sheltering from sun or rain. Passing under the vaulted roof he met Count Calovegli

leaning over the street. Only a hundred yards. Or perhaps we can rest awhile under this archway and converse. It is always pleasant to watch the movements of the count

stripped to the waist, were bearing aloft

w on earth are they able to support such a weight? Th

hich the people regard with a kind of superstitious awe. It is dedicated to Saint Elias and believed to stand in mysterious sympathy with the volcano on the mainland. You will observe too, sooner or later, som

ather awkward. I suppose

say, the spectacle takes one back into mythological times. Would you not call it a procession of Titans, children of the Gods, storing up mountain-blocks for some earth-convulsing battle? Your eyes deceive you. Like Thomas, the doubting apostle, you must touch with your hands. And even then you are not wholly convince

th your Old Town. There is an autumnal flavour about the place. It is a poet's dream. Some

ind. He felt disposed to linger with the kindly stranger who seemed so much more communicative and affable than on the occasion of those theatricals. He lit a cigarette and watched, for a while, the flow of life through tha

t proportion must be good enough to remain what they are. We could not live without those whose business it is to bring the re

ng once more the center of human activity. There is an attraction in the idea to one who, like myself, has been brought up on the classics and h

d man

these days. Oh yes! They will recover their sanity. They will perceive under what artificial and cramping conditions, under what false standards, they have been living; they will realize the advantages of a climate where nature meets you half-way. I know little of England, but the United States are pretty familiar to me; the two climates, I imagine, cannot be

l of strenuousness,"

why you deify strenuousness. You dare not forgo it. The Eskimo doubtless deifies seal-blubber; he could not survive without it. Yet nobody would b

ditable for a man to support his wife and

odwork, the paintings and repaintings, the tons of fuel, the lighting in winter, the contrivances against frost and rain, the never-ending repairs to houses, the daily polishings and dustings and scrubbings and those thousand other impediments to the life of the spirit! Half of them are non-existent in these latitudes; half the vitality expended upon them could therefore be directed to other ends. At close of day, your Northerner is pleased with himself. He has survived; he has even prospered. His family is adequately housed and clothed. He feels 'presentable,' as he calls it, in the eyes of those who share his illusions. He fancies he has attained the aim and object of existence. He is too dazed with the struggle to perceive how incongruous his efforts have been. What has he done? He has sacri

ment. Still, he said nothing. He was naturally chary of words; it was so interesting to listen t

lost that old stability; its elements seemed to be held in solution, ready to form new combinations. China had taught him that men can be happy and virtuous while lacking, and even scorning the first of these twin blessings. Then had come Africa, where his notions had been further dislocated by those natives who derided both the one and the other-such fine healthy animals, all the same! A candid soul, he allo

line of thought, broke out in

degrading effort to plunder one another, men who are tired of hustle and strife. What, sir, would you call the phenomenon of to-day? What is the outstanding feature of modern life? The bankruptcy, the proven fatuity, of everything that is bound up under the name of Western civilization. Men are perceiving, I think, the baseness of mercantile and military ideals, the loftiness of those older ones. They will band together, the elect of every nation, in god-favoured regions round the Inland Sea, thee to lead serener lives. To those how have hitherto preached indecorous maxims of conduct they will say: 'What is all this ferocious nonsense about strenuousness? An unbecoming fluster. And who are you, to d

ough, at a certain point of the discourse, he would have liked to drop a word about Thermopylae and Marath

ming dreamer

the Count to be able to pas

he was an extremely p