How much higher are we going?"
"Here we are. This is the place I meant."
"Charming, I must say! But aren't we a little too near the edge of the
cliff? It makes me feel funny, as if I were in a balloon."
"Oh, we'll get used to it. Let's sit down, Mr. Heard."
Still distrustful of his companion, the bishop made himself comfortable
and glanced around. They were high up; the view embraced half the
island. The distant volcano confronting him was wreathed in sullen grey
smoke that rose up from its lava torrent, and crowned with a menacing
vapour-plume. Then an immensity of sea. At his feet, separated from
where he sat by wide stony tracts tremulous with heat, lay the Old
Town, its houses nestling in a bower of orchards and vineyards. It
looked like a shred of rose-tinted lace thrown upon he landscape. He
unraveled those now familiar thoroughfares and traced out, as a map,
the more prominent buildings--the Church, the Municipality, the old
Benedictine Monastery where Duke Alfred, they say, condescendingly
invited himself to dine with the monks every second month in such state
and splendour that, the rich convent revenues being exhausted, His
Highness was pleased to transfer his favours to the neighboring
Carthusians who went bankrupt in their turn; he recognized Count
Caloveglia's place and, at the furthest outskirts, the little villa Mon
Repos.
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