I see below the archway where it issues from the underground recesses of our establishment; and there stands a bust, in serious expectation that some one will walk out and saunter down among the rocks; but no one ever does.Just at the right is a little beach, with a few old houses, and a mimic stir of life, a little curve in the cliff, the mouth of the gorge, where the waves come in with a lazy swash.Some fishing-boats ride there; and the shallow water, as I look down this sunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels of oranges and lemons, as if some one was brewing a gigantic bowl of punch.And there is an uncommon stir of life; for a schooner is shipping a cargo of oranges, and the entire population is in a clamor.Donkeys are coming down the winding way, with a heavy basket on either flank;stout girls are stepping lightly down with loads on their heads; the drivers shout, the donkeys bray, the people jabber and order each other about; and the oranges, in a continual stream, are poured into the long, narrow vessel, rolling in with a thud, until there is a yellow mass of them.Shouting, scolding, singing, and braying, all come up to me a little mellowed.The disorder is not so great as on the opera stage of San Carlo in Naples; and the effect is much more pleasing.
This settlement, the marina, under the cliff, used to extend along the shore; and a good road ran down there close by the water.The rock has split off, and covered it; and perhaps the shore has sunk.
They tell me that those who dig down in the edge of the shallow water find sunken walls, and the remains of old foundations of Roman workmanship.People who wander there pick up bits of marble, serpentine, and malachite,--remains of the palaces that long ago fell into the sea, and have not left even the names of their owners and builders,-the ancient loafers who idled away their days as everybody must in this seductive spot.Not far from here, they point out the veritable caves of the Sirens, who have now shut up house, and gone away, like the rest of the nobility.If I had been a mariner in their day, I should have made no effort to sail by and away from their soothing shore.
I went, one day, through a long, sloping arch, near the sailors'
Chapel of St.Antonino, past a pretty shrine of the Virgin, down the zigzag path to this little marina; but it is better to be content with looking at it from above, and imagining how delightful it would be to push off in one of the little tubs of boats.Sometimes, at night, I hear the fishermen coming home, singing in their lusty fashion; and I think it is a good haven to arrive at.I never go down to search for stones on the beach: I like to believe that there are great treasures there, which I might find; and I know that the green and brown and spotty appearance of the water is caused by the showing through of the pavements of courts, and marble floors of palaces, which might vanish if I went nearer, such a place of illusion is this.
The Villa Nardi stands in pleasant relations to Vesuvius, which is just across the bay, and is not so useless as it has been represented; it is our weather-sign and prophet.When the white plume on his top floats inland, that is one sort of weather; when it streams out to sea, that is another.But I can never tell which is which: nor in my experience does it much matter; for it seems impossible for Sorrento to do anything but woo us with gentle weather.But the use of Vesuvius, after all, is to furnish us a background for the violet light at sundown, when the villages at its foot gleam like a silver fringe.I have become convinced of one thing: it is always best when you build a house to have it front toward a volcano, if you can.There is just that lazy activity about a volcano, ordinarily, that satisfies your demand for something that is not exactly dead, and yet does not disturb you.
Sometimes when I wake in the night,--though I don't know why one ever wakes in the night, or the daytime either here,--I hear the bell of the convent, which is in our demesne,--a convent which is suppressed, and where I hear, when I pass in the morning, the humming of a school.At first I tried to count the hour; but when the bell went on to strike seventeen, and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity of the thing came over me, and I wondered whether it was some frequent call to prayer for a feeble band of sisters remaining, some reminder of midnight penance and vigil, or whether it was not something more ghostly than that, and was not responded to by shades of nuns, who were wont to look out from their narrow latticed windows upon these same gardens, as long ago as when the beautiful Queen Joanna used to come down here to repent--if she ever did repent--of her wanton ways in Naples.
On one side of the garden is a suppressed monastery.The narrow front towards the sea has a secluded little balcony, where I like to fancy the poor orphaned souls used to steal out at night for a breath of fresh air, and perhaps to see, as I did one dark evening, Naples with its lights like a conflagration on the horizon.Upon the tiles of the parapet are cheerful devices, the crossbones tied with a cord, and the like.How many heavy-hearted recluses have stood in that secluded nook, and been tempted by the sweet, lulling sound of the waves below; how many have paced along this narrow terrace, and felt like prisoners who wore paths in the stone floor where they trod; and how many stupid louts have walked there, insensible to all the charm of it!
