It was beautiful as paradise, as the first
creation. On the shores were the ruined lemon-pillars standing out in
melancholy, the clumsy, enclosed lemon-houses seemed ramshackle, bulging
among vine stocks and olive trees. The villages, too, clustered upon
their churches, seemed to belong to the past. They seemed to be
lingering in bygone centuries.
'But it is very beautiful,' I protested. 'In England--'
'Ah, in England,' exclaimed the padrone, the same ageless, monkey-like
grin of fatality, tempered by cunning, coming on his face, 'in England
you have the wealth--_les richesses_--you have the mineral coal and the
machines, _vous savez_. Here we have the sun--'
He lifted his withered hand to the sky, to the wonderful source of that
blue day, and he smiled, in histrionic triumph. But his triumph was only
histrionic. The machines were more to his soul than the sun. He did not
know these mechanisms, their great, human-contrived, inhuman power, and
he wanted to know them. As for the sun, that is common property, and no
man is distinguished by it. He wanted machines, machine production,
money, and human power.
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