We spent the rest of the day wandering between the seashore and the pine-clad hills.  The next morning I put in some work, but in the afternoon I was free to walk and explore.  On one of my first tramps I discovered a monastery among the hills hundreds of feet above the sea, built and governed by an Italian monk.  I got to know the Pere Vergile[27] and had a great talk with him.  He was both wise and strong, with ingratiating, gentle manners.  Had he gone as a boy from his little Italian fishing village to New York or Paris, he would have certainly come to greatness and honour.  One afternoon I took Oscar to see him:  the monastery was not more than three-quarters of an hour’s stroll from our hotel; but Oscar grumbled at the walk as a nuisance, said it was miles and miles; the road, too, was rough, and the sun hot.  The truth was, he was abnormally lazy.  But he fascinated the Italian with his courteous manner and vivid speech, and as soon as we were alone the Abbe asked me who he was.

“He must be a great man,” he said, “he has the stamp of a great man, and he must have lived in courts:  he has the charming, graceful, smiling courtesy of the great.”

“Yes,” I nodded mysteriously, “a great man—­incognito.”

The Abbe kept us to dinner, made us taste of his oldest wines, and a special liqueur of his own distilling; told us how he had built the monastery with no money, and when we exclaimed with wonder, reproved us gently: 

“All great things are built with faith, and not with money; why wonder that this little building stands firmly on that everlasting foundation?”

When we came out of the monastery it was already night, and the moonlight was throwing fantastic leafy shadows on the path, as we walked down through the avenue of forest to the sea shore.

“You remember those words of Vergil, Frank—­per amica silentia lunae—­they always seem to me indescribably beautiful; the most magic line about the moon ever written, except Browning’s in the poem in which he mentioned Keats—­’him even.’  I love that ‘amica silentia.’  What a beautiful nature the man had who could feel ’the friendly silences of the moon.’”

When we got down the hill he declared himself tired.

“Tired after a mile?” I asked.

“Tired to death, worn out,” he said, laughing at his own laziness.

“Shall we get a boat and row across the bay?”

“How splendid! of course, let’s do it,” and we went down to the landing stage.  I had never seen the water so calm; half the bay was veiled by the mountain, and opaque like unpolished steel; a little further out, the water was a purple shield, emblazoned with shimmering silver.  We called a fisherman and explained what we wanted.  When we got into the boat, to my astonishment, Oscar began calling the fisher boy by his name; evidently he knew him quite well.  When we landed I went up from the boat to the hotel, leaving Oscar and the boy together....