mprisoned. [_Translator's note._]

CHAPTER II

THE MOONSHINE AND CLOUD SONATA

The sun was sinking behind the brow of Monte Bre and darkness was
rapidly covering the precipitous shores and the houses of Oria, stamping
the purple and gloomy profile of the hill on the luminous green of the
waves, which were running obliquely towards the west, still high, but
foamless in the tired _breva_. The lights in Casa Ribera had been the
last to go out. Standing against the steep vineyards of the mountainside
dotted with olives, it spanned the narrow road that follows the
coast-line, its modest facade rising from the clear water, and flanked
on the west, towards the village, by a little hanging-garden, divided
into two tiers, on the east, towards the church, by a small terrace
raised on pillars, which framed a square of church ground. In this
facade there was a small boathouse where at that time the boat belonging
to Franco and Luisa lay rocking on the jostling waves. Above the
boathouse a slender gallery united the hanging-garden on the west and
the terrace on the east, and looked out upon the lake by means of three
windows. They called it a loggia, perhaps because it really had been
one in olden times. The old house bore incrusted here and there several
of these venerable, fossil names, which had survived through tradition,
and represented, in their apparent absurdity, the mysteries of the
religion of domestic walls. Behind the loggia was a spacious hall, and
there were two rooms more behind that. On the west was the small
dining-room, its walls covered with little, illustrious, paper men, each
under his own glass and in his own frame, each in a dignified attitude,
like the illustrious in flesh and blood, looking as if his colleagues
did not exist at all, and the world was gazing at him alone. On the east
was the alcove-room, where next to her parents, in her own little bed,
slept Signorina Maria Maironi, born in August, 1852.

From the great rococo chests to the bed-rooms, the kitchen cupboard, the
black clock in the little dining-room, the sofa in the loggia, with its
brown cover, sprinkled with red and yellow Turks; from the
straw-bottomed chairs to the armchairs with disproportionately high
arms, the furniture of the house all belonged to the epoch of the
illustrious men, most of whom wore the wig and pigtail. Even though it
did appear to have just descended from the garret, it seemed,
nevertheless, to have regaine