A sudden turn of the stairs brought him into the brilliant sunshine and on to a little piazza hanging midway on the green mountain between the blue lake and the blue sky. Severally on three sides, an albergo, a café, a church, and on the fourth a wondrous view of sparkling waters, cloud-swathed hills, and distant pinnacles of Alpine snow. Thoroughly tired out by his climb, Eustace sat thankfully down in an iron chair, put his feet on another, and ordered some wine from a dreary little waiter who emerged from the café to attend to his wants. While waiting, Eustace tilted his straw hat over his eyes, weary with the vivid colours of the landscape, and fell fast asleep. The waiter brought the wine, saw that the English gentleman was asleep, so retired cautiously without waking him. In the pale blue sky the restless swallows flashed in rapid circles or twittered around the sloping eaves of the houses. On the hot stones of the little piazza slept the restless brown lizards, and in the centre a fountain of sparkling water splashed musically in its wide stone basin, all carved in Renaissance style with vines and masks and nude figures of frenzied Bacchanals. The sun dipped behind the arid peak of a great mountain, and threw its shadow on to the mountain village, while the mellow bells began to ring slowly in the slender campanile. Eustace awoke with a start, to find that he had been asleep for some considerable time, and after drinking his wine, and feeing the dreary little waiter, went across to have a look at the church before descending. It was exactly the same as any other Italian church, frescoes of angels, and saints, and wide-eyed cherubim, side altars, before which burned the low, steady flame of oil lamps, high altar glittering with jewels and flowers, painted windows, faint odour of incense and all such things. A woman was kneeling at the confessional, within which sat a severe-looking priest, and Eustace, catching a glimpse of this, took a seat in the shadow near the door lest he should disturb them. "If I could only believe like that," he thought to himself as he enviously watched the kneeling woman, "how much happier I should be; but it is impossible for me to shift my burden of sins on to the shoulders of another man. This is the age of disbelief, and I am of it, but I would give the whole world to be able to return to the primitive simple faith of these peasants, to believe in miracles, in the intercession of saints, in the canonization of pious people, and in all those beautiful fables which make their lives so bright."