Now before a breath of this bad wind reached him, Girolamo had begun to grow a-weary of the Fen-country; and but for his deadly-hatred to the Norman race and his great love for the Lord of Brunn, he would have quitted it and England, long before this season, to wander again into some sunny climate. Ofttimes would he say to himself in his solitary musings,—“Oh flat, wet, and fenny land, shall mine eyes never more behold a mountain? Oh fogs, and vapours, and clouds for ever dropping rain, shall I never see a bright blue sky again?[215] Oh fireless, watery sun, scarcely brighter or warmer than the moon in my own land beyond the Alps and the Apennines, shall I never see thee again in thy glory? Am I to perish in these swamps—to be buried in a bog? Oh for one glimpse before I die of mine own blue mountains, and bright blue seas and skies!—one glance at thy bay, oh beautiful Salerno, and at the mountain of Saint Angelo and the hills of Amalfi, at the other mountains, and hills, and olive-groves, and gay vine-yards that gird thee in! There be no hills here but mud-banks; no trees but dull alders and willows.[216] But courage, sinking heart, or sinking, shivering frame, for there is food here for my revenge; there be Normans here to circumvent and kill!” So did the Salernitan commune with himself in his many lonely hours (many because he sought them and avoided the society of men) before the evil tongues were wagged against him. Upon his first hearing what the monks were then beginning to say of him, he only muttered to himself, “This is a dull-witted generation that I have fallen among! These Saxons go still on all-fours! They are but ultra-montanes and barbarians, knowing nothing of the history of past ages, or of the force and effect of the natural sciences! Dolts are they all except the Lord Hereward, and his share of wit is so great that none is left for his countrymen. But Hereward is worthy of ancient Rome; and it is not the stupid sayings of his people that will make me quit his side and disappoint my vengeance. I have done these same Saxons some good service, and I will do them more before I die or go hence. They will think better of me when they know more of me, and of the natural means wherewith I work mine ends. Ha! ha! I needs must laugh when I hear that Girolamo of Salerno, the witch-seeker and the destroyer of witches, the sworn foe to all magic save the MAGIA ALBA, which is no magic at all, but only science, should be named as a wizard and necromancer! Oh! ye good doctors, and teachers of Salerno who flourished and began to make a school for the study of Nature before the Normans came among us, think of this—think of your pupil, penitent, and devotee, being taken in these dark septentrional regions for a sorcerer! Ha! ha!”