_Monte Catini,
September._
Charlton and I made an excursion to Lucca the other day and quite a
success it proved. Off we drove in the early morning, with pheasant
feathers and jangling bells on our horses, trotting by the trellised
vineyards, the vines wreathing between trees of mulberry, and the
great bunches of grapes beginning to grow purple, past brakes of cane,
between the walls of villas, up and over bridges where the rivers run
higher than the country, banked up by the levees, on through the
plain. In the distance rose the hills, deep blue behind and pale blue
in ranges beyond. We met the country people coming from the fair at
Borgo Buggiano--the greatest cattle market in Tuscany--driving
beautiful white and brindled cows. Soon we came to the town itself and
rattled along its flag-paved streets, making a great noise with
cracking whip and warning cries, and the _contadini_ crowded up
against the wall and stopped their business to watch us as we passed
the gay booths with displays of many colored, mottled, glazed earthen
ware, set forth, perilously near our wheels.
Then out into the country again, and on across flat green meadows from
which rise the ancient walls of Lucca with shaded avenues of
sycamores. We walked on the ramparts after luncheon and visited the
gallery of the Palazzo Ducale with its good Fra Bartolomeos, and the
cathedral filled with tinsel votive offerings of all kinds, and paper
flowers. There were preparations for a pilgrimage which is to adore
the Holy Image, a wooden likeness of the Saviour which Saint Somebody
rescued in Palestine once on a time and placed in a ship without oar
or rudder and set adrift. So the ship floated, miraculously directed
by Providence, to the shores of Italy, and wonderment came over the
people who saw the vessel mysteriously cruising up and down. They
tried to catch it, but it fled from them until one Archbishop of
Lucca, awakened from a warning dream, went out to find it. And the
moment the boat saw the aforesaid archpriest upon the shore it sailed
confidingly up to him and delivered its sacred image, which so came to
Lucca. This is quite like the House of the Virgin at Loreto which was
brought by a flight of angels through the air to that town--to be a
fruitful source of income, for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit
the place each year.
P. S. How I should like to run up to Paris, but the Ambassador would
not approve of my having leave again. I am more disappointed than you
can know, but I still hope to see you in America before long--am
returning to Rome.
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