From Rome the Sabines are merely a noble chain of peaks culminating in the calm lion profile of the couchant “Lionessa,” her face to the north, waiting through the long blue days of summer for the crown of snow that the winter lays on her brow. The slopes and spurs that descend towards the Campagna are smiling enough—as they should be, turned everlastingly to the sun and the sea. One must pass beyond all that, climb by rough and narrow paths to the great tossed heart of the hills and stand on some peak like Guadognolo, to take in the amazing grandeur of the Sabines. Even from lower places, Olevano, for instance, you may look east and west and south and north, and feel as if you were standing on an island crag in an ocean of long sapphire billows rolling away, breaker beyond breaker, into infinity—a sea that in some moment of surpassing pride raised its breast too near the sky and froze to stone in that passion of ambition; and your heart, the heart of the native-born, tells you that every hollow between the breakers holds its rivers and lakes smothered in olives and vines and corn, its walled town and ancient church, its old fortified farm-houses, dazzlingly white against the sun-warmed rock of the mounting ridge—farm-houses with broad brick loggias garlanded with festoons of scarlet and orange, the bursting red _pepperoni_ as big as citrons, and strings of flame-coloured maize like golden pear-heads, all drying in the sun for the winter’s needs. Stop at one of these houses and ask for hospitality, and you will find out what the word really means. I have often thought of it when I was sitting through huge official dinners where the great ones of the earth were arranging its destinies over the champagne and truffles—with the murder of a nation in their hearts. The commanded smile, and the cold, watchful eyes—the men fencing with words for rapiers, and we women watching every play of the shrouded steel and pretending to talk amiable nothings to each other; the gasp of relief at parting, and the consignment to everlasting perdition of the adversary, which broke from our worried mate when the door of the brougham had been clapped to and we could sink back on the cushions as we rolled away!