diterranean
below Pisa. It is calm now, on this day of the great festival,
sweeping serenely by rocky capes, and rounding into fragrant bays,
where overarching boughs droop and feather. But there is a sullen
look about its current, that tells how wicked it can be, this Serchio,
lashed into madness by winter storms, and the overflowing of the
water-gates above, among the high Apennines--at the Abbetone at San
Marcello, or at windy, ice-bound Pracchia.

How fair are thy banks, O mountain-bordered Serchio! How verdant
with near wood and neighboring forest! How gay with cottage
groups--open-galleried and garlanded with bunches of golden maize and
vine-branches--all laughing in the sun! The wine-shops, too, along the
road, how tempting, with snowy table-cloths spread upon dressers under
shady arbors of lemon--trees; pleasant odors from the fry cooking in
the stove, mixing with the perfume of the waxy flowers! Dear to
the nostrils of the passers-by are these odors. They snuff them
up--onions, fat, and macaroni, with delight. They can scarcely resist
stopping once for all here, instead of waiting for their journey's end
to eat at Lucca.

But the butterflies--and they are many--are wiser in their generation.
The butterflies have a festival of their own to-day. They do not wait
for any city. They are fixed to no spot. They can hold their festival
anywhere under the blue sky, in the broad sunshine.

See how they dance among the flowers! Be it spikes of wild-lavender,
or yellow down within the Canterbury bell, or horn of purple
cyclamens, or calyx of snowy myrtle, the soft bosom of tall lilies or
glowing petals of red cloves--nothing comes amiss to the butterflies.
They are citizens of the world, and can feast wherever fancy leads
them.

Meanwhile, on comes the crowd, nearer and nearer to the city of their
pilgrimage, laughing, singing, talking, smoking. Your Italian peasant
must sleep or smoke, excepting when he plays at _morra_ (one, two,
three, and away!). Then he puts his pipe into his pocket. The
women are conversing in deep voices, in the _patois_ of the various
villages. The men, more silent, search out who is fairest--to lead
her on the way, to kneel beside her at the shrine, and, most prized of
all, to conduct her home. Each village has its belle, each belle her
circle of admirers. Belles and beaux all have their own particular
plan of diversion for the day. For is it not a great day? And is it
not stipulated in man