nake and the fox; never again to tremble
as his shadow went beside him on the sand; never to waste the sunlit
hours hidden in the bowels of the earth; never to be afraid of every
leaf that stirred, of every bird that flew, of every moon-beam that fell
across his path!--he laughed and sobbed with the ecstasy of his release.

"O God, Thou hast not forgotten!" he cried in that rapture of freedom.

All the old childish faiths that had been taught him by dim old altars
in stately Mantuan churches came back to his memory and heart.

On the barren rock of Gorgona he had cursed and blasphemed the Creator
and creation of a world that was hell; he had been without hope: he had
derided all the faiths of his youth as illusions woven by devils to make
the disappointment of man the more bitter.

But now in the sweetness of his liberty, all the old happy beliefs
rushed back to him; he saw Deity in the smile of the seas, in the light
upon the plains. He was free!

* * *

The world has lost the secret of making labour a joy; but nature has
given it to a few. Where the maidens dance the _Saltarello_ under the
deep Sardinian forests, and the honey and the grapes are gathered
beneath the snowy sides of Etna, and the oxen walk up to their loins in
flowing grass where the long aisles of pines grow down the Adrian shore,
this wood-magic is known still of the old simple charm of the pastoral
life.

* * *

"Does it vex you that I am not a boy?" said the girl--"why should it vex
you? I can do all they can, I can row better than many, and sail and
steer; I can drive too, and I know what to do with the nets; if I had a
boat of my own you would see what I could do."

"All that is very well," said Joconda with a little nod. "I do not say
it is not. But you have not a boat of your own, that is just it; that is
what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is some
one else's, and the haul too."

* * *

Wild bird of sea and cloud, you are a stormy petrel, but there may come
a storm too many--and I am old. I have done my best, but that is little.
If you were a lad one would not be so uneasy. I suppose the good God
knows best--if one could be sure of that--I am a hard working woman, and
I have done no great sin that I know of, but up in heaven they never
take any thought of me. When I was young, I asked them at my marriage
altar to help me, and when my boys were born