I D A L I A.
CHAPTER I.
"SHE SMILES THEM DOWN IMPERIALLY AS VENUS DID THE WAVES."
It was evening when the schooner ran into Capri, that Eden hung beneath the sea and sky. All its marvellous maze of colour was in its richest glow; the sun was sinking behind Solaro; the towering rocks of the Salto and the Faraglioni burned through their sublimity of gloom; a lustre of gold and purple streamed over mountainous Ischia down on the brow of Epomeneo, and over the low hills of Procida; and the blue water lay dazzling in the light, with the white sails of Sorrento skiffs scarce larger on its waves than the white wings of fluttering monachi, while over the sea came the odours of budding orange and citron gardens and a world of violets that filled the woods, sloping upward and upward into the clouds where Anacapri lay.
