ay
retaining but a portion of one flat, and making profit of the rest.
There, too, are the barracks and the syndic's hall; the Jesuits'
school, crowded with boys and girls; the shops for clothes,
confectionery, and trinkets; the piazza, with its fountain and
tasselled planes, and flowery chestnut-trees, a mass of greenery.
Under these trees the idlers lounge, boys play at leap-frog, men at
bowls. Women in San Remo work all day, but men and boys play for the
most part at bowls or toss-penny or leap-frog or morra. San Siro, the
cathedral, stands at one end of the square. Do not go inside; it has
a sickly smell of immemorial incense and garlic, undefinable and
horrible. Far better looks San Siro from the parapet above the
torrent. There you see its irregular half-Gothic outline across a
tangle of lemon-trees and olives. The stream rushes by through high
walls, covered with creepers, spanned by ferny bridges, feathered by
one or two old tufty palms. And over all rises the ancient turret of
San Siro, like a Spanish giralda, a minaret of pinnacles and pyramids
and dome bubbles, with windows showing heavy bells, old clocks, and
sundials painted on the walls, and a cupola of green and yellow tiles
like serpent-scales, to crown the whole. The sea lies beyond, and
the house-roofs break it with grey horizontal lines. Then there are
convents, legions of them, large white edifices, Jesuitical apparently
for the most part, clanging importunate bells, leaning rose-blossoms
and cypress-boughs over their jealous walls.

Lastly, there is the port--the mole running out into the sea, the quay
planted with plane-trees, and the fishing-boats--by which San Remo is
connected with the naval glory of the past--with the Riviera that gave
birth to Columbus--with the Liguria that the Dorias ruled--with the
great name of Genoa. The port is empty enough now; but from the pier
you look back on San Remo and its circling hills, a jewelled town
set in illimitable olive greyness. The quay seems also to be the
cattle-market. There the small buff cows of North Italy repose after
their long voyage or march, kneeling on the sandy ground or rubbing
their sides against the wooden cross awry with age and shorn of all
its symbols. Lambs frisk among the boats; impudent kids nibble
the drooping ears of patient mules. Hinds in white jackets and
knee-breeches made of skins, lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded
goats, ready to butt at every barking dog, and always s