Therefore Assunta Marzelli, the old bibliophile's housekeeper, made
holiday with his niece, now upon a visit to him, and together the
women climbed, where food might be procured for the last tardy
caterpillars to change their state.
They had started in the grey dawn, passed up a dry watercourse, and
proceeded where the vine was queen and there fell a scented filigree
of dead blossom from flowering olives. They had seen a million
clusters of tiny grapes already rounding and had passed through
wedges and squares of cultivated earth, where sprang alternate
patches of corn yellowing to harvest and the lush green of growing
maize. Figs and almonds and rows of red and white mulberries, with
naked branches stripped of foliage, broke the lines of the crops.
Here hedges sparkled in a harvest of scarlet cherries; and here
sheep and goats nibbled over little, bright tracts of sweet grass.
Higher yet shone out groves of chestnut trees, all shining with the
light of their tassels, very bright by contrast with the gloom of
the mountain pines.
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