HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
uses Google technology and indexes only and selectively internet - libraries having books with free public access
 
  Previous Next  

MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 213

View PDF version of this page

by any uncle's tenderness, consigned him without mercy to the sort of quarters which he ought to have occupied seven years before. And yet, poor devil, I could not help liking him, and he looked as if butter would hardly melt in his mouth. For the moment, however, as soon as I left the castle I forgot him with a heartless celerity, which I did not then know he deserved. He was completely put out of my mind by an exquisite Corinthian capi-tal and a marble slab covered with Greek inscrip-tions, which as I passed out over the bridge at once caught my eye, shining forlorn on a rubbish heap and facing the Gothic fortress. I lunched with the commissioner of the district, a Scotch gentleman, who occupied a Turkish house overlooking the harbour. I washed off the dust of antiquity in a quaint Oriental bedroom, with a ceil-ing painted like those in the palace of Mr. Matthews. My entertainer received me in a large hall, spanned by pointed arches and strewn with light-coloured car-pets. We looked out of the window at the pillars of the Temple of Venus, and then we quenched imagi-nation in a dish of excellent curry. When I re-turned to Mr. St. John's, however, my imagination was once more craving. He and I made a second excursion to St. Hilarion. I drank the romance of the past like a glass of mental absinthe, and I ar-ranged to go next day to seek for a yet deeper draught of it at the ruin of ruins, the wonderful Abbey of Bella Pais. 210 · IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

View PDF version of this page


  Previous First Next