And All The While The Cup Circled Round With Genial Iteration, And It Was Universally Agreed That, Whatever The Other Drawbacks Of Sant' Angelo Might Be, There Was Nothing To Be Said Against Its Native Liquor.

It was, indeed, a divine product; a vino di montagna of noble pedigree.

So I thought, as I laboriously scrambled up the stairs once more, solaced by this incident of the competition-grotto and slightly giddy, from the tobacco-smoke. And here, leaning against the door-post, stood the coachman who had divined my whereabouts by some dark masonic intuition of sympathy. His face expanded into an inept smile, and I quickly saw that instead of fortifying his constitution with sound food, he had tried alcoholic methods of defence against the inclement weather. Just a glass of wine, he explained. "But," he added, "the horse is perfectly sober."

That quadruped was equal to the emergency. Gloriously indifferent to our fates, we glided down, in a vertiginous but masterly vol-plane, from the somewhat objectionable mountain-town.

An approving burst of sunshine greeted our arrival on the plain.

IV

CAVE-WORSHIP

Why has the exalted archangel chosen for an abode this reeking cell, rather than some well-built temple in the sunshine? "As symbolizing a ray of light that penetrates into the gloom," so they will tell you. It is more likely that he entered it as an extirpating warrior, to oust that heathen shape which Strabo describes as dwelling in its dank recesses, and to take possession of the cleft in the name of Christianity.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 32 of 488
Words from 8278 to 8538 of 131203