Slowly, as the summer waned, I made my way up through the Casentino,
once more past the strongholds and the little towns. Now and then on my
way I met the herds, already setting out for the winter pastures of
Maremma. The grapes were plucking or gathered in, and everywhere there
were songs.
"Come volete faccia che non pianga,
Sapendo che da voi devo partire?
E tu, bello, in Maremma, ed io 'n montagna!
Chesta partenza mi farà morire."
So I came once more over Falterona, down to Castagno, that mountain
village where Andrea del Castagno, the follower of Masaccio, was born,
to S. Godenzo, between two streams, where Dante knew the castle of the
Guidi, and where Conte Tegrimo of Porciano received Henry VII. Here, at
last, I was in the very footsteps of Dante; for in the church there, in
the choir set high above the old crypt, he signed the deed of alliance
between the Guidi and the Ubaldini on 8th June 1302, "Actum in choro
Sancti Gaudentii de pede Alpium."
Nothing remains of the place as it was in those days, I suppose, save
the church, and that has been for the most part rebuilt; but the choir
stands, so that we may say here, on 8th June 1302, Dante took quill and
signed and spoke with his fellow-exiles.
Thence I followed the way to Dicomano by Sieve, at the foot of the
Consuma, and then up stream to Borgo S. Lorenzo, the capital of the
Mugello, and so by the winding road above the valley under the hills to
Fiesole, to Florence, wrapped in rain, through which an evening sun was
breaking.