He counted on his fingers, while all his friends stared respectfully
at him and me. He then gave orders, and a very young and beautiful
girl set before me as excellent a meal as I had eaten for days on
days, and he charged me but a franc and a half. He gave me also coffee
and a little cheese, and I, feeling hearty, gave threepence over for
the service, and they all very genially wished me a good-night; but
their wishes were of no value to me, for the night was terrible.
I had gone over forty miles; how much over I did not know. I should
have slept at Lugano, but my lightening purse forbade me. I thought,
'I will push on and on; after all, I have already slept, and so broken
the back of the day. I will push on till I am at the end of my tether,
then I will find a wood and sleep.' Within four miles my strength
abandoned me. I was not even so far down the lake as to have lost the
sound of the band at Lugano floating up the still water, when I was
under an imperative necessity for repose. It was perhaps ten o'clock,
and the sky was open and glorious with stars. I climbed up a bank on
my right, and searching for a place to lie found one under a tree near
a great telegraph pole. Here was a little parched grass, and one could
lie there and see the lake and wait for sleep. It was a benediction to
stretch out all supported by the dry earth, with my little side-bag
for pillow, and to look at the clear night above the hills, and to
listen to the very distant music, and to wonder whether or not, in
this strange southern country, there might not be snakes gliding about
in the undergrowth. Caught in such a skein of influence I was soothed
and fell asleep.
For a little while I slept dreamlessly.
Just so much of my living self remained as can know, without
understanding, the air around. It is the life of trees. That
under-part, the barely conscious base of nature which trees and
sleeping men are sunk in, is not only dominated by an immeasurable
calm, but is also beyond all expression contented. And in its very
stuff there is a complete and changeless joy. This is surely what the
great mind meant when it said to the Athenian judges that death must
not be dreaded since no experience in life was so pleasurable as a
deep sleep; for being wise and seeing the intercommunion of things, he
could not mean extinction, which is nonsense, but a lapse into that
under-part of which I speak. For there are gods also below the earth.
But a dream came into my sleep and disturbed me, increasing life, and
therefore bringing pain. I dreamt that I was arguing, at first easily,
then violently, with another man. More and more he pressed me, and at
last in my dream there were clearly spoken words, and he said to me,
'You must be wrong, because you are so cold; if you were right you
would not be so cold.' And this argument seemed quite reasonable to me
in my foolish dream, and I muttered to him, 'You are right, I must be
in the wrong. It is very cold...' Then I half opened my eyes and saw
the telegraph pole, the trees, and the lake. Far up the lake, where
the Italian Frontier cuts it, the torpedo-boats, looking for
smugglers, were casting their search-lights. One of the roving beams
fell full on me and I became broad awake. I stood up. It was indeed
cold, with a kind of clinging and grasping chill that was not to be
expressed in degrees of heat, but in dampness perhaps, or perhaps in
some subtler influence of the air.
I sat on the bank and gazed at the lake in some despair. Certainly I
could not sleep again without a covering cloth, and it was now past
midnight, nor did I know of any house, whether if I took the road I
should find one in a mile, or in two, or in five. And, note you, I was
utterly exhausted. That enormous march from Faido, though it had been
wisely broken by the siesta at Bellinzona, needed more than a few cold
hours under trees, and I thought of the three poor francs in my
pocket, and of the thirty-eight miles remaining to Milan.
The stars were beyond the middle of their slow turning, and I watched
them, splendid and in order, for sympathy, as I also regularly, but
slowly and painfully, dragged myself along my appointed road. But in a
very short time a great, tall, square, white house stood right on the
roadway, and to my intense joy I saw a light in one of its higher
windows. Standing therefore beneath, I cried at the top of my voice,
'Hola!' five or six times. A woman put her head out of the window into
the fresh night, and said, 'You cannot sleep here; we have no rooms,'
then she remained looking out of her window and ready to analyse the
difficulties of the moment; a good-natured woman and fat.
In a moment another window at the same level, but farther from me,
opened, and a man leaned out, just as those alternate figures come in
and out of the toys that tell the weather. 'It is impossible,' said
the man; 'we have no rooms.'
Then they talked a great deal together, while I shouted, _'Quid vis?
Non e possibile dormire in la foresta! e troppo fredo! Vis ne me
assassinare? Veni de Lugano--e piu--non e possibile ritornare!'_ and
so forth.
They answered in strophe and antistrophe, sometimes together in full
chorus, and again in semichorus, and with variations, that it was
impossible. Then a light showed in the chinks of their great door; the
lock grated, and it opened. A third person, a tall youth, stood in the
hall. I went forward into the breach and occupied the hall. He blinked
at me above a candle, and murmured, as a man apologizing 'It is not
possible.'
Whatever I have in common with these southerners made me understand
that I had won, so I smiled at him and nodded; he also smiled, and at
once beckoned to me. He led me upstairs, and showed me a charming bed
in a clean room, where there was a portrait of the Pope, looking
cunning; the charge for that delightful and human place was sixpence,
and as I said good-night to the youth, the man and woman from above
said good-night also. And this was my first introduction to the most
permanent feature in the Italian character. The good people!
When I woke and rose I was the first to be up and out. It was high
morning. The sun was not yet quite over the eastern mountains, but I
had slept, though so shortly yet at great ease, and the world seemed
new and full of a merry mind. The sky was coloured like that high
metal work which you may see in the studios of Paris; there was gold
in it fading into bronze, and above, the bronze softened to silver. A
little morning breeze, courageous and steady, blew down the lake and
provoked the water to glad ripples, and there was nothing that did not
move and take pleasure in the day.
The Lake of Lugano is of a complicated shape, and has many arms. It is
at this point very narrow indeed, and shallow too; a mole, pierced at
either end with low arches, has here been thrown across it, and by
this mole the railway and the road pass over to the eastern shore. I
turned in this long causeway and noticed the northern view. On the
farther shore was an old village and some pleasure-houses of rich men
on the shore; the boats also were beginning to go about the water.
These boats were strange, unlike other boats; they were covered with
hoods, and looked like floating waggons. This was to shield the rowers
from the sun. Far off a man was sailing with a little brown
sprit-sail. It was morning, and all the world was alive.
Coffee in the village left me two francs and two pennies. I still
thought the thing could be done, so invigorating and deceiving are the
early hours, and coming farther down the road to an old and beautiful
courtyard on the left, I drew it, and hearing a bell at hand I saw a
tumble-down church with trees before it, and went in to Mass; and
though it was a little low village Mass, yet the priest had three
acolytes to serve it, and (true and gracious mark of a Catholic
country!) these boys were restless and distracted at their office.
You may think it trivial, but it was certainly a portent. One of the
acolytes had half his head clean shaved! A most extraordinary sight! I
could not take my eyes from it, and I heartily wished I had an
Omen-book with me to tell me what it might mean.
When there were oracles on earth, before Pan died, this sight would
have been of the utmost use. For I should have consulted the oracle
woman for a Lira--at Biasca for instance, or in the lonely woods of
the Cinder Mountain; and, after a lot of incense and hesitation, and
wrestling with the god, the oracle would have accepted Apollo and,
staring like one entranced, she would have chanted verses which,
though ambiguous, would at least have been a guide. Thus:
_Matutinus adest ubi Vesper, et accipiens te
Saepe recusatum voces intelligit hospes
Rusticus ignotas notas, ac flumina tellus
Occupat--In sancto tum, tum, stans
Aede caveto Tonsuram Hirsuti
Capitis, via namque pedestrem
Ferrea praeveniens cursum, peregrine, laborem
Pro pietate tua inceptum frustratur, amore
Antiqui Ritus alto sub Numine Romae._
LECTOR. What Hoggish great Participles!
AUCTOR. Well, well, you see it was but a rustic oracle at 9 3/4 d. the
revelation, and even that is supposing silver at par. Let us translate
it for the vulgar:
When early morning seems but eve And they that still refuse receive:
When speech unknown men understand; And floods are crossed upon dry
land. Within the Sacred Walls beware The Shaven Head that boasts of
Hair, For when the road attains the rail The Pilgrim's great attempt
shall fail.
Of course such an oracle might very easily have made me fear too much.
The 'shaven head' I should have taken for a priest, especially if it
was to be met with 'in a temple'--it might have prevented me entering
a church, which would have been deplorable. Then I might have taken it
to mean that I should never have reached Rome, which would have been a
monstrous weight upon my mind. Still, as things unfolded themselves,
the oracle would have become plainer and plainer, and I felt the lack
of it greatly. For, I repeat, I had certainly received an omen.
The road now neared the end of the lake, and the town called Capo di
Lago, or 'Lake-head', lay off to my right. I saw also that in a very
little while I should abruptly find the plains. A low hill some five
miles ahead of me was the last roll of the mountains, and just above
me stood the last high crest, a precipitous peak of bare rock, up
which there ran a cog-railway to some hotel or other. I passed through
an old town under the now rising heat; I passed a cemetery in the
Italian manner, with marble figures like common living men. The road
turned to the left, and I was fairly on the shoulder of the last
glacis. I stood on the Alps at their southern bank, and before me was
Lombardy.
Also in this ending of the Swiss canton one was more evidently in
Italy than ever. A village perched upon a rock, deep woods and a
ravine below it, its houses and its church, all betrayed the full
Italian spirit.
The frontier town was Chiasso. I hesitated with reverence before
touching the sacred soil which I had taken so long to reach, and I
longed to be able to drink its health; but though I had gone, I
suppose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing, I would not
stop; for I remembered the two francs, and my former certitude of
reaching Milan was shaking and crumbling. The great heat of midday
would soon be on me, I had yet nearly thirty miles to go, and my bad
night began to oppress me.
I crossed the frontier, which is here an imaginary line. Two slovenly
customs-house men asked me if I had anything dutiable on me. I said
No, and it was evident enough, for in my little sack or pocket was
nothing but a piece of bread. If they had applied the American test,
and searched me for money, then indeed they could have turned me back,
and I should have been forced to go into the fields a quarter of a
mile or so and come into their country by a path instead of a
highroad.
This necessity was spared me. I climbed slowly up the long slope that
hides Como, then I came down upon that lovely city and saw its frame
of hills and its lake below me.
These things are not like things seen by the eyes. I say it again,
they are like what one feels when music is played.
I entered Como between ten and eleven faint for food, and then a new
interest came to fill my mind with memories of this great adventure.
The lake was in flood, and all the town was water.
Como dry must be interesting enough; Como flooded is a marvel. What
else is Venice? And here is a Venice at the foot of high mountains,
and _all_ in the water, no streets or squares; a fine even depth of
three feet and a half or so for navigators, much what you have in the
Spitway in London River at low spring tides.
There were a few boats about, but the traffic and pleasure of Como was
passing along planks laid on trestles over the water here and there
like bridges; and for those who were in haste, and could afford it
(such as take cabs in London), there were wheelbarrows, coster carts,
and what not, pulled about by men for hire; and it was a sight to
remember all one's life to see the rich men of Como squatting on these
carts and barrows, and being pulled about over the water by the poor
men of Como, being, indeed, an epitome of all modern sociology and
economics and religion and organized charity and strenuousness and
liberalism and sophistry generally.
For my part I was determined to explore this curious town in the
water, and I especially desired to see it on the lake side, because
there one would get the best impression of its being really an aquatic
town; so I went northward, as I was directed, and came quite
unexpectedly upon the astonishing cathedral. It seemed built of
polished marble, and it was in every way so exquisite in proportion,
so delicate in sculpture, and so triumphant in attitude, that I
thought to myself--
'No wonder men praise Italy if this first Italian town has such a
building as this.'
But, as you will learn later, many of the things praised are ugly, and
are praised only by certain followers of charlatans.
So I went on till I got to the lake, and there I found a little port
about as big as a dining-room (for the Italian lakes play at being
little seas. They have little ports, little lighthouses, little
fleets for war, and little custom-houses, and little storms and little
lines of steamers. Indeed, if one wanted to give a rich child a
perfect model or toy, one could not give him anything better than an
Italian lake), and when I had long gazed at the town, standing, as it
seemed, right in the lake, I felt giddy, and said to myself, 'This is
the lack of food,' for I had eaten nothing but my coffee and bread
eleven miles before, at dawn.
So I pulled out my two francs, and going into a little shop, I bought
bread, sausage, and a very little wine for fourpence, and with one
franc eighty left I stood in the street eating and wondering what my
next step should be.
It seemed on the map perhaps twenty-five, perhaps twenty-six miles to
Milan. It was now nearly noon, and as hot as could be. I might, if I
held out, cover the distance in eight or nine hours, but I did not see
myself walking in the middle heat on the plain of Lombardy, and even
if I had been able I should only have got into Milan at dark or later,
when the post office (with my money in it) would be shut; and where
could I sleep, for my one franc eighty would be gone? A man covering
these distances must have one good meal a day or he falls ill. I could
beg, but there was the risk of being arrested, and that means an
indefinite waste of time, perhaps several days; and time, that had
defeated me at the Gries, threatened me here again. I had nothing to
sell or to pawn, and I had no friends. The Consul I would not attempt;
I knew too much of such things as Consuls when poor and dirty men try
them. Besides which, there was no Consul I pondered.
I went into the cool of the cathedral to sit in its fine darkness and
think better. I sat before a shrine where candles were burning, put up
for their private intentions by the faithful. Of many, two had nearly
burnt out. I watched them in their slow race for extinction when a
thought took me.
'I will,' said I to myself, 'use these candles for an ordeal or
heavenly judgement. The left hand one shall be for attempting the road
at the risk of illness or very dangerous failure; the right hand one
shall stand for my going by rail till I come to that point on the
railway where one franc eighty will take me, and thence walking into
Milan:--and heaven defend the right.'
They were a long time going out, and they fell evenly. At last the
right hand one shot up the long flame that precedes the death of
candles; the contest took on interest, and even excitement, when, just
as I thought the left hand certain of winning, it went out without
guess or warning, like a second-rate person leaving this world for
another. The right hand candle waved its flame still higher, as though
in triumph, outlived its colleague just the moment to enjoy glory, and
then in its turn went fluttering down the dark way from which they say
there is no return.
None may protest against the voice of the Gods. I went straight to the
nearest railway station (for there are two), and putting down one
franc eighty, asked in French for a ticket to whatever station that
sum would reach down the line. The ticket came out marked Milan, and I
admitted the miracle and confessed the finger of Providence. There was
no change, and as I got into the train I had become that rarest and
ultimate kind of traveller, the man without any money whatsoever--
without passport, without letters, without food or wine; it would be
interesting to see what would follow if the train broke down.