We examined the place, after our frugal dinner, and found a natural path under the edge of the hill behind, stretching away back into the valley, and leading, after a short walk, to a small stream and a waterfall. Across it, just above the fall, lay the trunk of an old and vigorous fig-tree, full of green limbs, and laden with fruit half ripe. It made a natural bridge over the stream, and as its branches shaded the rocks below, we could easily imagine Napoleon, walking to and fro in the smooth path, and seating himself on the broadest stone in the heat of the summer evenings he passed on the spot. It was the only walk about the place, and a secluded and pleasant one. The groves of firs and brush above, and the locust and cherry-trees on the edges of the walk, are old enough to have shaded him. We sat and talked under the influence of the “genius of the spot,” till near sunset, and then, cutting each a walking-stick from the shoots of the old fig-tree, returned to the boats and reached the ship as the band struck up their exhilarating music for the evening on the quarter-deck.
We have passed two or three days at Elba most agreeably. The weather has been fine, and the ships have been thronged with company. The common people of the town come on board in boat-loads, men, women, and children, and are never satisfied with gazing and wondering. The inhabitants speak very pure Tuscan, and are mild and simple in their manners. They all take the ships to be bound upon a mere voyage of pleasure; and, with the officers in their gay dresses, and the sailors in their clean white and blue, the music morning and evening, and the general gaiety on board, the impression is not much to be wondered at.
Yesterday, after dinner, Captain Nicholson took us ashore in his gig, to pass an hour or two in the shade. His steward followed, with a bottle or two of old wine, and landing near the fountain to which the boats are sent for water, we soon found a spreading fig-tree, and, with a family of the country people from a neighbouring cottage around us, we idled away the hours till the cool of the evening. The simplicity of the old man and his wife, and the wonder of himself and several labourers in his vineyard, to whom the captain gave a glass or two of his excellent wines, would have made a study for Wilkie. Sailors are merry companions for a party like this. We returned over the unruffled expanse of the bay, charmed with the beauty of the scene by sunset, and as happy as a life, literally _sans souci_, could make us. What is it, in this rambling absence from all to which we look forward to in love and hope, that so fascinates the imagination?