Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/300

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288
IN MAREMMA.

the wholesome winds of the west blew against her face, and nigh at hand was the green autumn of Maremma.

So she took up her domicile in earnest there, and ceased to feel desolate.

The jewellery was all that Saturnino had robbed from the tombs, and the utensils of bronze and of pottery served all her daily needs. Untroubled by any knowledge of their history and antiquity, yet vaguely moved to reverent use of them because they belonged to these dead owners of the place, whom she revered, she took the bronze oinochoë with her to the water spring, she set her herb-soup on the embers in the bronze situla, she made her oaten bread in the embossed phiale, she drank the broth out of the painted depas, shaped like that cup of the sun in which the Python Slayer once passed across the sea. She used all these things reverently, washed them with careful hands, and never thought they were dishonoured thus.

The Typhon frowned at her from the ceiling of the tomb, and the Dii Involuti turned their impassive faces on her every time she passed out of the stone doors or climbed the steep stair passage to the