"There! that's a beautiful incident for the book."
"Bother the book!" I answered with pensive grace.
After this the drive home was dull and uneventful. We were almost smothered in dust, but that was merely a trifling inconvenience, which the beauty of the night and the glorious moonlight quite made up for.
O water whispering Still through the dark into mine ears.
I made two excursions to the Timavo and San Giovanni. The first was with the "Fat Boy." It was a rainy sort of day, and there was nothing to be done in the way of exercise but to go for a walk, so I beguiled the "Fat Boy" into accompanying me. I like to take him for walks. I feel I am doing good to suffering humanity--he may get rid of a little of his superfluous flesh by the exertion. I cannot say that up to now he has exhibited much thankfulness for my philanthropic efforts. We took Pixner, the gamekeeper, and his two dogs with us. Pixner is much looked up to in the village of Duino as a great traveller and linguist. He spent one or two years in England as servant to "our host," and was commonly known there as "Mr. Pig-nose"--his own name being found difficult to pronounce.
San Giovanni is not far from Duino--only a walk of half an hour or so. It is classic ground, for does not the world-famed Timavo make here its appearance into the light of day?
Antenor potuit mediis elapsus Achivis Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus regna Liburnorum et fontem superare Timavi, unde per ora novem vasto cum murmure montis it mare proruptum et pelago premit arva sonanti.
The "nine mouths" of Virgil have now sunk to three, however. It is a most extraordinary thing, this river, all at once, seeming to come from nowhere, there it is, not a little feeble, trickling streamlet, but a wide, fast-flowing river. There is no doubt that the original springs are somewhere underground, and that it runs for a considerable distance in the bowels of the earth. Every now and then on the neighbouring hill-side you come to a hole in the ground where you hear the rush of the water, and the splash if you drop a stone down. The ground about this neighbourhood is a perfect honeycomb.
Almost all the classic authors speak of the Timavo. I had carefully compiled a list of these old gentlemen with a kind of history of the river, but I will spare the reader, and merely say that they believed it to be the entrance to the Infernal Regions, and that the Argonauts are said to have come here after they had annexed the Golden Fleece.