cession, which gets slowly down the rugged
path, I lose sight of my companions, and have the solitude, the sun
on the rocks, the glistening sea, all to myself. Soon I espy a man
below me sauntering down among the rocks. He sees me and moves away,
a solitary figure. I say solitary; and so it is in effect, although
he is leading a little boy, and calling to his dog, which runs back
to bark at me. Is this the brigand of whom I have read, and is he
luring me to his haunt? Probably. I follow. He throws his cloak
about his shoulders, exactly as brigands do in the opera, and loiters
on. At last there is the point in sight, a gray wall with blind
arches. The man disappears through a narrow archway, and I follow.
Within is an enormous square tower. I think it was built in Spanish
days, as an outlook for Barbary pirates. A bell hung in it, which
was set clanging when the white sails of the robbers appeared to the
southward; and the alarm was repeated up the coast, the towers were
manned, and the brown-cheeked girls flew away to the hills, I doubt
not, for the touch of the sirocco was not half so much to be dreaded
as the rough importunity of a Saracen lover. The bell is gone now,
and no Moslem rovers are in sight. The maidens we had just passed
would be safe if there were. My brigand disappears round the tower;
and I follow down steps, by a white wall, and lo! a house,--a red
stucco, Egyptian-looking building,--on the very edge of the rocks.
The man unlocks a door and goes in. I consider this an invitation,
and enter. On one side of the passage a sleeping-room, on the other
a kitchen,--not sumptuous quarters; and we come then upon a pretty
circular terrace; and there, in its glass case, is the lantern of the
point. My brigand is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quiet
way, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being. It is
very solitary, he says. I should think so. It is the end of
everything. The Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the
worn crags below. The rocks rise up to the sky behind. There is
nothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, and quiet, petrified
Capri, three miles distant across the strait. It is an excellent
place for a misanthrope to spend a week, and get cured. There must
be a very dispiriting influence prevailing here; the keeper refused
to take any money, the solitary Italian we have seen so affected.

We returned late. The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one,
was supe