The Land of Cockayne: A Novel

'No, it is nothing; it is from this first heat of spring,' he stammered. And he brought his hands across his forehead, which was covered with cold drops of sweat. Still, to try...

Bianca Maria Cavalcanti and Antonio Amati's love for each other had got stronger and sadder. Indeed, the secret sorrow gave some attractive flavour of tears to their passion; wh...

'Agnesina Fragalà, papa's lovely daughter,' said the young father, leaning over the brass cradle that shone like gold, holding open the lace curtains with rose-coloured ribbons,...

Dr. Antonio Amati was deeply in love with Bianca Maria Cavalcanti. That rugged heart that had got like iron in its conflict with science, men and things, that had had to drink u...

The summer rain beat sadly on the pavement; two broad yellow gutters went down the sides of Nardones Road; the sickening sulphurous smell of August storms was in the air. In San...

For three days in the Marquis di Formosa's house a deep silence had reigned. The doors, oiled in their hinges and locks, shut and opened with no noise. The two old servants, Gio...

The afternoon sun crept into the Piazzetta dei Banchi Nuovi, broadening from Cardone's, the engraver, to Cappa's, the chemist, lengthening on from there up the whole Santa Chiar...

Gentle April opened all the flowers in the gardens, terraces, and balconies in Naples; wherever there was a little earth warmed by the sun, bedewed with rime, a flower sprang up...

The summer of that year was a bad one for the Neapolitans, morally and materially. Above all, from the end of June the summer scirocco had gone on dissolving into rain; storms c...

Not once for a month past had Dr. Antonio Amati seen that thoughtful, delicate girl's face between the yellowish old curtains in the balcony opposite his study window, which loo...

Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti read that letter over eight or ten times before putting it in her pocket. She was working at her lace alone in the bare large room, thinking over w...

From the first days of January, Naples was taken with a mania for work that spread from one house and shop to another, from street to street, quarter to quarter, from fashionabl...

Cesare and Luisella Fragalà had shut the shop that rainy summer evening at nine o'clock, half an hour earlier than usual, because with that bad weather, that boisterous, warm sc...

Prostrate on the dark old carved wood kneeling-desk, her elbows resting on velvet cushions, head slightly bent, her face hidden in her hands, Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti seeme...

Don Gennaro Parascandolo, the money-lender, had for some time past been coming very often to the big gateway in Nardones Road. He went up the big stairs to the second floor, whe...

In the little Barbassone inn, on the road that goes down from Moiariella di Capodimonte to Ponte Rossi, there were no customers that clear winter morning. It was really an outho...

Both the gamblers went upstairs very quietly, like evil-doers or timid young fellows who have disobeyed their father's orders; each carried a latchkey, and shut the door without...

With the odorous smoke of a Tocos cigarette filling the little room, Don Gennaro Parascandolo was deeply wrapped up in the study of his little pocket-book, turning over the page...

The two sisters, Donnas Caterina and Concetta, were sitting opposite each other at the dinner-table. They were eating silently, with their eyes down; and occasionally they bent...

The fourth of January, 188--, very early in the morning, the porter's wife at Rossi Palazzo, formerly called Cavalcanti, put a step-ladder against the architrave of the entrance...