I.

For the sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of Tuscan

hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without circumlocution

what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line from Empoli to

Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway station is at the

distance of at least an hour and a half's drive from the mountain upon

which the city stands.

The lumbering train which brought us one October evening from Asciano

crawled into this station after dark, at the very moment when a storm,

which had been gathering from the south-west, burst in deluges of rain

and lightning. There was, however, a covered carriage going to the town.

Into this we packed ourselves, together with a polite Italian gentleman

who, in answer to our questions, consulted his watch, and smilingly

replied that a little half-hour would bring us easily to Montepulciano.

He was a native of the place. He knew perfectly well that he would be

shut up with us in that carriage for two mortal hours of darkness and

down-pour. And yet, such is the irresistible impulse in Italians to say

something immediately agreeable, he fed us with false hopes and had no

fear of consequences. What did it matter to him if we were pulling out

our watches and chattering in well-contented undertone about _vino

nobile_, _biftek_, and possibly a _pollo arrosto_, or a dish of _tordi_?

At the end of the half-hour, as he was well aware, self-congratulations

and visions of a hearty supper would turn to discontented wailings, and

the querulous complaining of defrauded appetites. But the end of half an

hour was still half an hour off; and we meanwhile were comfortable.

The night was pitchy dark, and blazing flashes of lightning showed a

white ascending road at intervals. Rain rushed in torrents, splashing

against the carriage wheels, which moved uneasily, as though they could

but scarcely stem the river that swept down upon them. Far away above us

to the left, was one light on a hill, which never seemed to get any

nearer. We could see nothing but a chasm of blackness below us on one

side, edged with ghostly olive-trees, and a high bank on the other.

Sometimes a star swam out of the drifting clouds; but then the rain

hissed down again, and the flashes came in floods of livid light,

illuminating the eternal olives and the cypresses which looked like huge

black spectres. It seemed almost impossible for the horses to keep their

feet, as the mountain road grew ever steeper and the torrent swelled

around them. Still they struggled on. The promised half hour had been

doubled, trebled, quadrupled, when at last we saw the great brown sombre

walls of a city tower above us. Then we entered one of those narrow

lofty Tuscan gates, and rolled upon the pavement of a street.

The inn at Montepulciano is called Marzocco, after the Florentine lion

which stands upon its column in a little square before the house. The

people there are hospitable, and more than once on subsequent occasions

have they extended to us kindly welcome. But on this, our first

appearance, they had scanty room at their disposal. Seeing us arrive so

late, and march into their dining-room, laden with sealskins,

waterproofs, and ulsters, one of the party hugging a complete Euripides

in Didot's huge edition, they were confounded. At last they conducted

the whole company of four into a narrow back bed-room, where they

pointed to one fair-sized and one very little bed. This was the only

room at liberty, they said; and could we not arrange to sleep here?

_S'accomodi, Signore! S'accomodi, Signora!_ These encouraging words,

uttered in various tones of cheerful and insinuating politeness to each

member of the party in succession, failed to make us comprehend how a

gentleman and his wife, with a lean but rather lengthy English friend,

and a bulky native of the Grisons, could "accommodate themselves"

collectively and undividedly with what was barely sufficient for their

just moiety, however much it might afford a night's rest to their worse

half. Christian was sent out into the storm to look for supplementary

rooms in Montepulciano, which he failed to get. Meanwhile we ordered

supper, and had the satisfaction of seeing set upon the board a huge red

flask of _vino nobile_. In copious draughts of this the King of Tuscan

wines, we drowned our cares; and when the cloth was drawn, our friend

and Christian passed their night upon the supper table. The good folk of

the inn had recovered from their surprise, and from the inner recesses

of their house had brought forth mattresses and blankets. So the better

and larger half of the company enjoyed sound sleep.

It rained itself out at night, and the morning was clear, with the

transparent atmosphere of storm-clouds hurrying in broken squadrons from

the bad sea quarter. Yet this is just the weather in which Tuscan

landscape looks its loveliest. Those immense expanses of grey undulating

uplands need the luminousness of watery sunshine, the colour added by

cloud-shadows, and the pearly softness of rising vapours, to rob them of

a certain awful grimness. The main street of Montepulciano goes straight

uphill for a considerable distance between brown palaces; then mounts by

a staircase-zigzag under huge impending masses of masonry; until it ends

in a piazza. On the ascent, at intervals, the eye is fascinated by

prospects to the north and east over Val di Chiana, Cortona, Thrasymene,

Chiusi; to south and west over Monte Cetona, Radicofani, Monte Amiata,

the Val d'Ombrone, and the Sienese Contado. Grey walls overgrown with

ivy, arcades of time-toned brick, and the forbidding bulk of houses hewn

from solid travertine, frame these glimpses of aerial space. The piazza

is the top of all things. Here are the Duomo; the Palazzo del Comune,

closely resembling that of Florence, with the Marzocco on its front; the

fountain, between two quaintly sculptured columns; and the vast palace

Del Monte, of heavy Renaissance architecture, said to be the work of

Antonio di San Gallo.

We climbed the tower of the Palazzo del Comune, and stood at the

altitude of 2000 feet above the sea. The view is finer in its kind than

I have elsewhere seen, even in Tuscany, that land of panoramic

prospects over memorable tracts of world-historic country. Such

landscape cannot be described in words. But the worst is that, even

while we gaze, we know that nothing but the faintest memory of our

enjoyment will be carried home with us. The atmospheric conditions were

perfect that morning. The sun was still young; the sky sparkled after

the night's thunderstorm; the whole immensity of earth around lay lucid,

smiling, newly washed in baths of moisture. Masses of storm-cloud kept

rolling from the west, where we seemed to feel the sea behind those

intervening hills. But they did not form in heavy blocks or hang upon

the mountain summits. They hurried and dispersed and changed and flung

their shadows on the world below.