Mentone streets were empty and the shops shut: only hotel and villa
windows were bright. The carriage passed through the town, and beyond
the last houses of Garavan the night was blacker than before.
They came to the Italian frontier, broken off from the rich slopes of
France by the deep Gorge of St. Louis, resonant with singing water. Mary
knew how by daylight the mountains of Italy loomed cold in contrast to
the warm cultivation of the western hills, bare as a series of stone
shelves at an antiquary's, spread with a few rags of faded green to show
off some sparsely scattered jewels. But in the night she could see
nothing, and could hear only the moan of sea and wind, mingled strangely
with the high complaining voice of hidden streams. On the mountainside
twinkled the feeble lights of Grimaldi, a poor rock-town once the
fortress house of Monaco's princes; and after another plunge into the
darkness of folding hills and olive groves they passed La Mortola. Not
more than a mile or two beyond the village and the sleeping garden,
Mary, with her face always at the window, said:
"Now we are coming to the Chateau Lontana!"
Eve and her husband both leaned forward, straining their eyes to make
out a height rising above the road, and the black shape of a house with
towers which seemed cut in the purple curtain of the sky. There were
black nunlike forms of cypress trees also, which stood grouped together
as if looking down thoughtfully from their tall slopes, and old,
wide-branching olives were filmy as a gray cloud in the darkness.
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