It May Well Be That Florentines Of Past Centuries Left The Hewn Blocks In Their Shady Caverns For A Certain

Length of time, as do the Parisians of to-day, in order to allow for the slow discharge and evaporation

Of liquid; whereas now the material, saturated with moisture, is torn from its damp and cool quarries and set in the blazing sunshine. At the Bourse, for instance, - quite a modern structure - the columns already begin to show fissures. [7]

Amply content with Viareggio, because the Siren dwells so near, I stroll forth. The town is awake. Hotels are open. Bathing is beginning. Summer has dawned upon the land.

I am not in the city mood, three months in Florence having abated my interest in humanity. Past a line of booths and pensions I wander in the direction of that pinery which year by year is creeping further into the waves, and driving the sea back from its old shore. There is peace in this green domain; all is hushed, and yet pervaded by the mysterious melody of things that stir in May-time. Here are no sombre patches, as under oak or beech; only a tremulous interlacing of light and shade. A peculiarly attractive bole not far from the sea, gleaming rosy in the sunshine, tempts me to recline at its foot.

This insomnia, this fiend of the darkness - the only way to counteract his mischief is by guile; by snatching a brief oblivion in the hours of day, when the demon is far afield, tormenting pious Aethiopians at the Antipodes. How well one rests at such moments of self-created night, merged into the warm earth! The extreme quietude of my present room, after Florentine street-noises, may have contributed to this restlessness. Also, perhaps, the excitement of Corsanico. But chiefly, the dream - that recurrent dream.

Everybody, I suppose, is subject to recurrent dreams of some kind. My present one is of a painful or at least sad nature; it returns approximately every three months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I am in a distant town where I lived many years back, and where each stone is familiar to me. I have come to look for a friend - one who, as a matter of fact, died long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this fact; once embarked on the dream-voyage, I hold him to be still alive. Glad at the prospect of meeting my friend again, I traverse cheerfully those well-known squares in the direction of his home.... Where is it, that house; where has it gone? I cannot find it. Ages seem to pass while I trample up and down, in ever-increasing harassment of mind, along interminable rows of buildings and canals; that door, that well-remembered door - vanished! All search is vain. I shall never meet him: him whom I came so far to see. The dismal truth, once established, fills me with an intensity of suffering such as only night-visions can inspire.

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