It is a gay and a
grand scene, in which the inn, though unassuming, is unpleasing, if
you pay attention to it. An ugly little box-like inn. A stuffy-looking
and uninviting inn. Salt and tobacco, it announces in faint letters
above the door, may be bought there. But one would prefer to buy these
things elsewhere. There is a bench outside, and a rickety table with a
zinc top to it, and sometimes a peasant or two drinking a glass or two
of wine. The proprietress is very unkempt. To Don Quixote she would
have seemed a princess, and the inn a castle, and the peasants notable
magicians. Don Quixote would have paused here and done something. Not
so do I.
By daylight, on the way down from my little home to Rapallo, or up
from Rapallo home, I am indeed hardly conscious that this inn exists.
By moonlight, too, it is negligible. Stars are rather unbecoming to
it. But on a thoroughly dark night, when it is manifest as nothing but
a strip of yellow light cast across the road from an ever-open door,
great always is its magic for me. Is? I mean was. But then, I mean
also will be. And so I cleave to the present tense--the nostalgic
present, as grammarians might call it.
Likewise, when I say that thoroughly dark nights are rare here, I mean
that they are rare in the Gulf of Genoa.
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