As our talk proceeded the gardener gave me a little light on his own
history; formerly he was valet to a gentleman of Cotrone, with whom
he had travelled far and wide over Europe; yes, even to London, of
which he spoke with expressively wide eyes, and equally expressive
shaking of the head. That any one should journey from Calabria to
England seemed to him intelligible enough; but he marvelled that I
had thought it worth while to come from England to Calabria. Very
rarely indeed could he show his garden to one from a far-off
country; no, the place was too poor, accommodation too rough; there
needed a certain courage, and he laughed, again shaking his head.
The ordinary graves were marked with a small wooden cross; where a
head-stone had been raised, it generally presented a skull and
crossed bones. Round the enclosure stood a number of mortuary
chapels, gloomy and ugly. An exception to this dull magnificence in
death was a marble slab, newly set against the wall, in memory of a
Lucifero--one of that family, still eminent, to which belonged the
sacrilegious bishop.
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