"The clay with which they make pipes in the island of Negroponte; we call it _meerschaum_ at home, you know. Ah, it is a beautiful earth--the very flower of minerals. The Negroponte here is as good as that in Turkey, and when I have my pipes finished, I shall be able to say that I am the first Christian that has ever worked in it." Old Augustine would not let me off till I had paid a visit to his laboratory. He had established himself in one of the rooms formerly occupied by poor Clemens Paoli, and pointed out to me with pride his Negroponte and the pipes he had been engaged in making, and which he had laid in the sun to dry. I believe that, once in his life, there comes to every man a time when he would fain leave the society of men, and go into the green woods and be a hermit, and an hour when his soul would gladly find rest even in the religious silence of the Trappist. I have here told my reader the brief story of old Augustine's life, because it attracted me so strongly at the time, and seemed to me a true specimen of German character. CHAPTER XII. THE BATTLE-FIELD OF PONTE NUOVO. "Gallia vicisti! profuso turpiter auro Armis pauca, dolo plurima, jure nihil!"--_The Corsicans._ I left Morosaglia before Ave Maria, to descend the hills to Ponte Nuovo. Near the battle-field is the post-house of Ponte alla Leccia, where the Diligence from Bastia arrives after midnight, and with it I intended to return to Bastia. The evening was beautiful and clear--the stillness of the mountain solitude stimulated thought. The twilight is here very short. Hardly is Ave Maria over when the night comes. I seldom hear the bells pealing Ave Maria without remembering those verses of Dante, in which he refers to the softened mood that descends with the fall of evening on the traveller by sea or land:-- "It was the hour that wakes regret anew In men at sea, and melts the heart to tears, The day whereon they bade sweet friends adieu, And thrills the youthful pilgrim on his way With thoughts of love, if from afar he hears The vesper bell, that mourns the dying day."