The sea, by this time, was completely covered with a scattered mass of bubbling foam through which the yacht ploughed her way easily without rolling much, although she listed alternately to the right and then to the left like a strong swimmer accommodating his stroke to the waves. Close to a ruined convent, some distance ahead, a rocky point projected, bearing a dazzlingly white lighthouse at its extremity. The promontory was covered, as with a fleece, with a thick growth of silvery olive trees, between which could be seen numerous painted villas, while its rocky base was a network of tiny creeks. This was Cape Porto-Fino, a place rendered famous by the captivity there of Francis I. after Pavia. The yacht rounded it so closely that Hautefeuille could hear the roar of the waves breaking upon the rocks. Beyond the promontory again stretched the sullen sheet of water with the long line of the Ligurian coast, which descends from Chiappa and Camogli as far as Genoa by way of Recco, Nervi, and Quinto. Height ascending after height could be seen, the hills forming the advance guard of the Apennines, their valleys planted with figs and chestnuts, their villages of brightly painted cottages, dotting the scene, and with, in the foreground, the narrow strip of sandy soil that serves as seashore. The landscape, at once savage and smiling, impressed the business man and the lover in different ways, for the former said with disdain:-- "They have not been able to make a double track railway along their coast! I suppose the task is too big for these people.--Why, my line from Marionville to Duluth has four tracks--and we had to make tunnels of a different sort from these!" "But even one line is too much here," replied Hautefeuille, pointing to a locomotive that was slowly skirting the shore, casting out a thick volume of smoke. "What is the good of modern inventions in an old country?--How can one dream of an existence of struggles amid such scenery?" he continued, as though thinking aloud. "How is it possible to contemplate the stern necessities of life upon this Riviera, or upon the other?--Provence and Italy are oases in your desert of workshops and manufactories. Have a little respect for them. Let there be at least a corner of the world left for lovers and poets, for those who yearn for a life of peace and happiness, for those who dream of a solitude shared only by some beloved companion and surrounded by the loveliness of nature and of art.--Ah! how sweet and peaceful this morning is!"