the crowd. Class distinctions are cut very fine. As we pass with the
padrona of the hotel, who is a Bavarian, we stop to speak to our own
padroni, the Di Paoli. They have a warm handshake and effusive polite
conversation for us; for Maria Samuelli, a distant bow. We realize
our mistake.
The barber--not the Siciliano, but flashy little Luigi with the big
tie-ring and the curls--knows all about the theatre. He says that Enrico
Persevalli has for his mistress Carina, the servant in _Ghosts_: that
the thin, gentle, old-looking king in _Hamlet_ is the husband of
Adelaida, and Carina is their daughter: that the old, sharp, fat little
body of a queen is Adelaida's mother: that they all like Enrico
Persevalli, because he is a very clever man: but that the 'Comic', Il
Brillante, Francesco, is unsatisfied.
In three performances in Epiphany week, the company took two hundred and
sixty-five francs, which was phenomenal. The manager, Enrico Persevalli,
and Adelaida pay twenty-four francs for every performance, or every
evening on which a performance is given, as rent for the theatre,
including light. The company is completely satisfied with its reception
on the Lago di Garda.
So it is all over. The Bersaglieri go running all the way home, because
it is already past half past ten. The night is very dark. About four
miles up the lake the searchlights of the Austrian border are swinging,
looking for smugglers. Otherwise the darkness is complete.
_4_
SAN GAUDENZIO
In the autumn the little rosy cyclamens blossom in the shade of this
west side of the lake. They are very cold and fragrant, and their scent
seems to belong to Greece, to the Bacchae. They are real flowers of the
past. They seem to be blossoming in the landscape of Phaedra and Helen.
They bend down, they brood like little chill fires. They are little
living myths that I cannot understand.
After the cyclamens the Christmas roses are in bud. It is at this season
that the cacchi are ripe on the trees in the garden, whole naked trees
full of lustrous, orange-yellow, paradisal fruit, gleaming against the
wintry blue sky. The monthly roses still blossom frail and pink, there
are still crimson and yellow roses. But the vines are bare and the
lemon-houses shut. And then, mid-winter, the lowest buds of the
Christmas roses appear under the hedges and rocks and by the streams.
They are very lovely, these first large, cold, pure buds, like violets,
like magnolias, but cold, lit up with the light from the snow.
The days go by, through the brief silence of winter, when the sunshine
is so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead leaves gleam brown,
and water sounds hoarse in the ravines. It is so still and transcendent,
the cypress trees poise like flames of forgotten darkness, that should
have been blown out at the end of the summer. For as we have candles to
light the darkness of night, so the cypresses are candles to keep the
darkness aflame in the full sunshine.
Meanwhile, the Christmas roses become many. They rise from their budded,
intact humbleness near the ground, they rise up, they throw up their
crystal, they become handsome, they are heaps of confident, mysterious
whiteness in the shadow of a rocky stream. It is almost uncanny to see
them. They are the flowers of darkness, white and wonderful
beyond belief.
Then their radiance becomes soiled and brown, they thaw, break, and
scatter and vanish away. Already the primroses are coming out, and the
almond is in bud. The winter is passing away. On the mountains the
fierce snow gleams apricot gold as evening approaches, golden, apricot,
but so bright that it is almost frightening. What can be so fiercely
gleaming when all is shadowy? It is something inhuman and unmitigated
between heaven and earth.
The heavens are strange and proud all the winter, their progress goes on
without reference to the dim earth. The dawns come white and
translucent, the lake is a moonstone in the dark hills, then across the
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