Alatri

What brought me to Alatri?

Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born

here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a

passable place, but as to Alatri----

"You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are

precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia."

"Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other

citizens like yourself----"

"It does indeed! I am the least of the sons of Alatri."

"Then it must be worthy of a visit...."

In the hottest hour of the afternoon they deposited me outside the city

gate at some new hotel--I forget its name--to which I promptly took an

unreasoning dislike. There was a fine view upon the mountains from the

window of the room assigned to me, but nothing could atone for that lack

of individuality which seemed to exhale from the establishment and its

proprietors. It looked as though I were to be a cypher here. Half an

hour was as much as I could endure. Issuing forth despite the heat, I

captured a young fellow and bade him carry my bags whithersoever he

pleased. He took me to the Albergo della----

The Albergo della----is a shy and retiring hostelry, invisible as such

to the naked eye, since it bears no sign of being a place of public

entertainment at all. Here was individuality, and to spare. Mine host is

an improvement even upon him of the Pergola at Valmontone; a man after

my own heart, with merry eyes, drooping white moustache and a lordly

nose--a nose of the right kind, a flame-tinted structure which must have

cost years of patient labour to bring to its present state of

blossoming. That nose! I felt as though I could dwell for ever beneath

its shadow. The fare, however, is not up to the standard of the

"Garibaldi" inn at Frosinone which I have just left.

Now Frosinone is no tourist resort. It is rather a dull little place; I

am never likely to go there again, and have therefore no reason for

keeping to myself its "Garibaldi" hotel which leaves little to be

desired, even under these distressful war-conditions. It set me

thinking--thinking that there are not many townlets of this size in

rural England which can boast of inns comparable to the "Garibaldi" in

point of cleanliness, polite attention, varied and good food, reasonable

prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the

other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly

cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have

to walk across a cold room at night--refinement of torture--in order to

turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone

enough to condemn these establishments, one and all.

Yes! And the beds; those frowsy, creaky, prehistoric wooden concerns,

always six or eight inches too short, whose mattresses have not been

turned round since they were made. What happens? You clamber into such a

receptacle and straightway roll downhill, down into its centre, into a

kind of river-bed where you remain fixed fast, while that monstrous

feather-abomination called a pillow, yielding to pressure, rises up on

either side of your head and engulfs eyes and nose and everything else

into its folds. No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as

well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you

lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin.

Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is

fit for a Christian to sleep in....

The days are growing hot.

A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the

convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the

afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to

myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for,

being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded

with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places,

where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious

official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation

here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well

established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a

bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly

that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the

place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a

lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery--he brings me

every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself.

"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice."

"I know. Did you tell him he might----?"

"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his

mother."

"Tell him again, to-morrow."

It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude.

In October--and we are now at midsummer--there occurred a little

adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this.

I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the

still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending

journey northwards for which the passport was already viséd, when there

met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers. We

stared at one another. His face was familiar to me, though I knew not

where I had seen it. Then he introduced himself. He was a director of

the Banca d'ltalia. And was I not the gentleman who had recently been to

Orvinio? I remembered.

"The last time I was there," I said, "was about a month ago. I fancy we

had some conversation in the motor up from Mandela."

"That is so. And now, however disagreeable it may be, I feel myself

obliged to perform a patriotic duty. This is war-time. I would ask you

to be so good as to accompany us to the nearest police-station."

"Which is not far off," I replied. "There is one up the next street on

our right."

We walked there, all four of us, without saying another word. "What have

I been doing?" I wondered. Then we climbed upstairs.

Here, at a well-lighted table in a rather stuffy room, sat a delegato or

commissario--I forget which--surrounded, despite the lateness of the

hour, by one or two subordinates. He was of middle age, and not

prepossessing. He looked as if he could make himself unpleasant, though

his face was not of that actively vicious--or actively stupid: the terms

are interconvertible--kind. While scanning his countenance, during those

few moments, sundry thoughts flitted through my mind.

These then, I said to myself--these are the functionaries, whether

executive or administrative, whether Italian or English or Chinese, whom

a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of

them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is

certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying

their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws,

and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority

should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said

to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of

history." Why not take that lesson to heart? Reverence of the mandarin

destroyed the fair life of old China, which was overturned by the

Tartars not because Chinamen were too weak or depraved, but because they

were the opposite: too moral, too law-abiding, too strong in their sense

of right. They paid for their virtue with the extinction of their

wonderful culture. They ought to have known better; they ought to have

rated morality at its true worth, since it was the profoundest Chinaman

himself who said that virtue is merely etiquette--or something to that

effect.

I found myself studying the delegato's physiognomy. What could one do

with such a composite face? It is a question which often confronts me

when I see such types. It confronted me then, in a flash. How make it

more presentable, more imposing? By what alterations? Shaving that

moustache? No; his countenance could not carry the loss; it would

forfeit what little air of dignity it possessed. A small pointed beard,

an eye-glass? Possibly. Another trimming of the hair might have improved

him, but, on the whole, it was a face difficult to manipulate, on

account of its inherent insipidity and self-contradictory features; one

of those faces which give so much trouble to the barbers and valets of

European royalties.

He took down the names and addresses of all four of us, and it was then

that I missed my chance. I ought to have spoken first instead of

allowing this luscious director to begin as follows:--

"The foreign gentleman here was at Orvinio about a month ago. He admits

it himself and I can corroborate the fact, as I was there at the same

time. Orvinio is a small country place in the corner of Umbria. There is

a mountain in the neighbourhood, remote and very high--altissima! It is

called Mount Muretta and occupies a commanding situation. For reasons

which I will leave you, Signer Commissario, to investigate, this

gentleman climbed up that mountain and was observed, on the very summit,

making calculations and taking measurements with instruments."

Now why did I climb up that wretched Muretta? For an all-sufficient

reason: it was a mountain. There is no eminence in the land, from Etna

and the Gran Sasso downwards, whose appeal I can resist. A bare

wall-like patch on the summit (whence presumably the name) visible from

below and promising a lively scramble up the rock, was an additional

inducement. Precipices are not so frequent at Orvinio that one can

afford to pass them by, although this one, as a matter of fact, proved

to be a mighty tame affair. There was yet another object to my trip. I

desired to verify a legend connected with this mountain, the tradition

of a vanished castle or hamlet in its upper regions to whose former

existence the name of a certain old family, still surviving at Orvinio,

bears witness. "We are not really from Orvinio," these people will tell

you. "We are from the lost castle of the Muretta." (There is not a

vestige of a castle left. But I found one brick in the jungle which

covers, on the further side of the summit, a vast rock-slide dating, I

should say, from early mediaeval days, under whose ruins the fastness

may lie buried.) Reasons enough for visiting Muretta.

As to taking measurements--well, a man is naturally accused of a good

many things in the course of half a century. Nobody has yet gone so far

as to call me a mathematician. These "calculations and instruments" were

a local mirage; as pretty an instance of the mythopoeic faculty as one

could hope to find in our degenerate days, when gods no longer walk the

earth. [27]

The official seemed to be impressed with the fact that my accuser was

director of a bank. He inquired what I had to say.

This was a puzzle. They had sprung the thing on me rather suddenly. One

likes to have notice of such questions. Tell the truth? I am often

tempted to do so; it saves so much trouble! But truth-telling is a

matter of longitude, and the further east one goes, the more one learns

to hold in check that unnatural propensity. (Mankind has a natural love

of the lie itself. Bacon.) Which means nothing more than that one will

do well to take account of national psychology. An English functionary,

athlete or mountaineer, might have glimpsed the state of affairs. But to

climb in war-time, without any object save that of exercising one's

limbs and verifying a questionable legend, a high and remote

mountain--Muretta happens to be neither the one nor the other--would

have seemed to an Italian an incredible proceeding. I thought it better

to assume the role of accuser in my turn: an Oriental trick.

"This director," I said, "calls himself a patriot. What has he told us?

That while at Orvinio he knew a foreigner who climbed a high mountain to

make calculations with instruments. What does this admirable citizen do

with regard to such a suspicious character? He does nothing. Is there

not a barrack-full of carbineers at the entrance of the place ready to

arrest such people? But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk

away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other

measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and

Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our English notion of

patriotism. I shall certainly make it my business to write and

congratulate the Banca d'Italia on possessing such a good Italian as

director. I shall also suggest that his talents would be more worthily

employed at the Banca--" (naming a notoriously pro-German establishment).

A poor speech; but it gave me the satisfaction of seeing the fellow grow

purple with fury and so picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the

spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be done with him. The

delegato suggested that inasmuch as he had said his say and deposited

his address, he was at liberty to depart, whenever so disposed.

They went--he and his friends.

The other was looking serious--as serious as such a face could be made

to look. He must not be allowed to think, I decided, for once an

official begins to think he is liable to grow conscientious and

then--why, any disaster might happen, the least of them being that I

should remain in custody pending investigations. In how many more

countries was I going to be arrested for one crime or another? This joke

had lost its novelty a good many years ago.

"A pernicious person," I began, "--you have but to look at him. And now

he has invited me here in order to make a patriotic impression on his

friends, those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since no

love is lost hereabouts between police and military). Such silly talk

about measurements! It should be nipped in the bud. Here you have an

intelligent young subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home with

me at my expense; we will go through all papers and search for

instruments and bring everything that savours of suspicion back to this

office, together with my passport which I never carry on my person.

This, meanwhile, is my carta di soggiorno."

The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I thought of those

miserable three days' grace which were all that the French consulate had

accorded me. If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded in

Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin again. And to tell him of

this dilemma would make him more distrustful than ever.

I went on hastily to admit that my request might not be regular, but how

natural! Were we not allies? Was it not my duty to clear myself of such

an imputation at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to that

end? I felt sure he could sympathise with the state of my mind, etc.

etc.

Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of invention, lent wings to

my words, and while thinking all the time: You little vermin, what are

you doing here, in that chair, when you should be delving the earth or

breaking stones, as befits your kind? I tried to picture myself climbing

up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port

would have been more in my line. Calculations! It is all I can do to

control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I

like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments! If this

young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my

belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the

delegato, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they often

are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of your

body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently reasonable.

The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing whatever to

do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to evade military

service.

We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his

polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of

the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather

dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala.

"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be

surprised at my long absence."

"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport."

"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with

him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten

o'clock, or eleven, or midday."

So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little

detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything

else. He did not even unfold it.

"E stato un' equivoco," was all he condescended to say, still without a

smile. There had been a misunderstanding.

The incident was closed.

Things might have gone differently in the country. I would either have

been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of

carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century

while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the

civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet--an inquiry without

which no Latin dossier is complete.

POSTSCRIPT.--Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many

of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever

come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a

street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in

their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not

tend to diminish?

There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome;

fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those

inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things

remained in the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set by the

ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The natives spend their days

in rushing to Rome and back on business connected with law-suits, not a

quarter of which would have arisen but for the existence of the

carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Individually, these men are

nowise at fault. They desire nothing better than to be left in peace.

Seldom do they meddle with local concerns--far from it! They live in

sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the populace, like a colony

of monks. The institution is to blame. It is their duty, among other

things, to take down any charge which anybody may care to prefer against

his neighbour. That done, the machinery of the law is automatically set

in motion. Five minutes' talk among the village elders would have

settled many affairs which now degenerate into legal squabbles of twice

as many years; chronic family feuds are fostered; a man who, on

reflection, would find it more profitable to come to terms with his

opponent over a glass of wine, or even to square the old syndic with a

couple of hundred francs, sees himself obliged to try the same tactics

on a judge of the high court--which calls for a different technique.

Altogether, the country is flagrantly over-policed. [28] It gives one a

queer sense of public security to see, at Rome for instance, every third

man you meet--an official, of course, of some kind--with a revolver

strapped to his belt, as if we were still trembling on the verge of

savagery in some cowboy settlement out West. Greek towns of about ten

thousand inhabitants, like Argos or Megara, have about ten municipal

guardians each, and peace reigns within their walls. How can ten men

perform duties which, in Italy, would require ten times as many? Is it a

question of climate, or national character? A question, perhaps, of

common sense--of realising that local institutions often work with less

friction and less outlay than that system of governmental centralisation

of which the carbineers are an example.

Meanwhile we are still at Alatri which, I am glad to discover, possesses

five gateways--five or even more. It is something of a relief to be away

from that Roman tradition of four. Military reasons originally, fixing

themselves at last into a kind of sacred tradition.... So it is, with

unimaginative races. Their pious sentimentalism crystallises into

inanimate objects. The English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral

strand, and the chimes of Big Ben, floating above that crowd of

many-hued Orientals, give to the white man a sense of homeliness and

racial solidarity. The French, more fluid and sensitive to the

incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial

buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition,

it pursues one with meaningless iteration from the burning sands of

Africa to Ultima Thule. Always those four gateways!

For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is comparable to that green

space on the summit of the citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning,

to take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the vanity of human

wishes. The less you have seen of localities like Tiryns the more you

will be amazed at this impressive and mysterious fastness. That portal,

those blocks--what Titans fitted them into their places? Well, we have

now learnt a little something about those Titans and their methods. From

this point you can see the old Roman road that led into Alatri; it

climbs up the hill in straightforward fashion, intersecting the broad

modern "Via Romana"--a goat-track, nowadays....

These Alatri remains are wonderful--more so than many of the sites which

old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his

curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he

stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations

about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the

same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual? We certainly find him

"hurrying down" past Anagni near-by, of whose imposing citadel he again

says nothing whatever....

I am now, at the end of several months, beginning to know Ramage fairly

well. I hope to know him still better ere we part company, if ever we

do. It takes time, this interpretation, this process of grafting one

mind upon another. For he does not supply mere information. A fig for

information. That would be easy to digest. He supplies character, which

is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of

what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a

philosophy of life.

And what is the dominating trait of this old Scotsman? The historical

sense. Ancient inscriptions interested him more than anything else. He

copied many of them during his trip; fifty, I should think; and it is no

small labour, as any one who has tried it can testify, to decipher these

half-obliterated records often placed in the most inconvenient

situations (he seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied himself

thus was to his credit in an age whose chief concern, as regards

antiquity, consisted in plundering works of art for ornamental purposes.

Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected

knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as

inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these

documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly

sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but

for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of

one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men

who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the

fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be

completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit.

His equipment in the interpretation of these stones and of all else he

picked up in the way of lore and legend was of the proper kind.

Boundless curiosity, first of all. And then, an adequate apparatus of

learning. He knew his classics--knew them so well that he could always

put his finger on those particular passages of theirs which bore upon a

point of interest. We may doubtless be able to supply some apt quotation

from Virgil or Martial. It is quite a different thing remembering, and

collating, references in. Aelian or Pliny or Aristotle or Ptolemy. And

wide awake, withal; not easily imposed upon. He is not of the kind to

swallow the tales of the then fashionable cicerone's. He has critical

dissertations on sites like Cannae and the Bandusian Fountain and

Caudine Forks; and when, at Nola, they opened in his presence a

sepulchre containing some of those painted Greek vases for which the

place is famous, he promptly suspects it to be a "sepulchre prepared for

strangers," and instead of buying the vases allows them to remain where

they are "for more simple or less suspicious travellers." On the way to

Cape Leuca he passes certain mounds whose origin he believes to be

artificial and the work of a prehistoric race. I fancy his conjecture

has proved correct. On page 258, speaking of an Oscan inscription, he

mentions Mommsen, which shows that he kept himself up to date in such

researches....

Of course it would be impossible to feel any real fondness for Ramage

before one has discovered his failings and his limitations. Well, he

seems to have taken Pratilli seriously. I like this. A young fellow who,

in 1828, could have guessed Pratilli to have been the arch-forger he

was--such a young fellow would be a freak of learning. He says little of

the great writers of his age; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose

imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but not in the

present. The Hohenstauffen period does not attract him. He rides close

to the magnificent Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site; he

inspects the castle of Lucera and says never a word about Frederick II

or his Saracens. At Lecce, renowned for its baroque buildings, he finds

"nothing to interest a stranger, except, perhaps, the church of Santa

Croce, which is not a bad specimen of architectural design." True, the

beauty of baroque had not been discovered in his day.

What pleases me less is that there occurs hardly any mention of wild

animals in these pages, and that he seems to enjoy natural scenery in

proportion as it reminds him of some passage in one of those poets whom

he is so fond of quoting. This love of poetic extracts and citations is

a mark of his period. It must have got the upper hand of him in course

of time, for we find, from the title-page of these "Nooks and Byways,"

that he was the author of "Beautiful Thoughts from Greek authors;

Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian authors, etc."; [29] indeed,

the publication of this particular book, as late as 1868, seems to have

been an afterthought. How greatly one would prefer a few more "Nooks and

By-ways" to all these Beautiful Thoughts! He must have been at home

again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were

gathered. If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains of

the south, instead of rushing through them like an express train. That

mania of "pressing forward"; that fatal gift of hustle....

His body flits hither and thither, but his mind remains observant,

assimilative. It is only on reading this book carefully that one

realises how full of information it is. Ay, he notices things, does

Ramage--non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time to look

around him. It is his charm. An intelligent interest in the facts of

daily life should be one of the equipments of the touring scholar,

seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift,

and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern

travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and

agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure

warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and

the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and

modern times and the fig-pecker bird--that bird you eat bones and all,

the focetola or beccafico (garden warbler). In fact, he has multifarious

interests and seems to have known several languages besides the

classics. He can hit off a thing neatly, as, when contrasting our

sepulchral epitaphs with those of olden days, he says that the key-note

of ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace; or "wherever we find a river in

this country (Calabria) we are sure to discover that it is a source of

danger and not of profit." He knew these southern torrents and

river-beds! He garners information about the Jewish and Albanian

colonies of South Italy; he studies Romaic "under one of the few Greeks

who survived the fatal siege of Missolonghi" and collects words of Greek

speech still surviving at Bova and Maratea (Maratea, by the way, has a

Phoenician smack; the Greeks must have arrived later on the scene, as

they did at Marathon itself).

A shrewd book, indeed. Like many of his countrymen, he was specially

bent on economic and social questions; he is driven to the prophetic

conclusion, in 1828, that "the government rests on a very insecure

basis, and the great mass of the intelligence of the country would

gladly welcome a change." Religion and schooling are subjects near his

heart and, in order to obtain a first-hand knowledge of these things in

Italy, he enters upon a friendship, a kind of intellectual flirtation,

with the Jesuits. That is as it should be. Extremes can always respect

one another. The Jesuits, I doubt not, learnt as much from Ramage as he

from them....

I wish I had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to

me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always

finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial

matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was

personally acquainted with several men whose names I have

mentioned--Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano;

in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him

with profit. And even at an earlier time; for I once claimed to have

discovered the ruins of a Roman palace on the larger of the Siren islets

(the Galli, opposite Positano)--now I find him forestalling me by nearly

a century. It is often thus, with archaeological discoveries.

He saw, near Cotrone, that island of the enchantress Calypso which has

disappeared since his day, and would have sailed there but for the fact

that no boat was procurable. I forget whether Swinburne, who landed

here, found any prehistoric remains on the spot; I should doubt it. On

another Mediterranean island, that of Ponza, I myself detected the

relics of what would formerly have been described as the residence of

that second Homeric witch, Circe. [30]

The mention of discoveries reminds me that I have already, of course,

discovered my ideal family at Alatri. Two ideal families....

One of them dwells in what ought to be called the "Conca d'Oro," that

luxuriant tract of land beyond the monastery where the waters flow--that

verdant dale which supplies Alatri, perched on its stony hill, with

fruit and vegetables of every kind. The man is a market-gardener with

wife and children, a humble serf, Eumaeus-like, steeped in the rich

philosophy of earth and cloud and sunshine. I bring him a cigar in the

cool of the evening and we smoke on the threshold of his two-roomed

abode, or wander about those tiny patches of culture, geometrically

disposed, where he guides the water with cunning hand athwart the roots

of cabbages and salads. He is not prone to talk of his misfortunes;

intuitive civility has taught him to avoid troubling a stranger with

personal concerns.

The mother is more communicative; she suffers more acutely. They are

hopelessly poor, she tells me, and in debt; unlucky, moreover, in their

offspring. Two boys had already died. There are only two left.

"And this one here is in a bad way. He has grown too ill to work. He can

only mope about the place. Nothing stays in his stomach--nothing; not

milk, not an egg. Everything is rejected. The Alatri doctor treated him

for stomach trouble; so did he of Frosinone. It has done no good. Now

there is no more money for doctors. It is hard to see your children

dying before your eyes. Look at him! Just like those two others."