AUCTOR. I know what you are going to say! Do not say it. You are going
to say: 'It is because they were at the sixth and tenth milestones
from Lucca on the Roman road.' Heaven help these scientists! Did you
suppose that I thought it was called Decimo because the people had ten
toes? Tell me, why is not every place ten miles out of a Roman town
called by such a name? Eh? You are dumb. You cannot answer. Like most
moderns you have entirely missed the point. We all know that there was
a Roman town at Lucca, because it was called Luca, and if there had
been no Roman town the modern town would not be spelt with two _c's._
All Roman towns had milestones beyond them. But why did _this_ tenth
milestone from _this_ Roman town keep its name?
LECTOR. I am indifferent.
AUCTOR. I will tell you. Up in the tangle of the Carrara mountains,
overhanging the Garfagnana, was a wild tribe, whose name I forget
(unless it were the Bruttii), but which troubled the Romans not a
little, defeating them horribly, and keeping the legionaries in some
anxiety for years. So when the soldiers marched out north from Luca
about six miles, they could halt and smile at each other, and say 'At
_Sextant..._ that's all right. All safe so far!' and therefore only a
little village grew up at this little rest and emotion. But as they
got nearer the gates of the hills they began to be visibly perturbed,
and they would say: 'The eighth mile! cheer up!' Then 'The ninth mile!
Sanctissima Madonna! Have you seen anything moving on the heights?'
But when they got to the _tenth_ milestone, which stands before the
very jaws of the defile, then indeed they said with terrible emphasis,
_'Ad Decimam!'_ And there was no restraining them: they would camp and
entrench, or die in the venture: for they were Romans and stern
fellows, and loved a good square camp and a ditch, and sentries and a
clear moon, and plenty of sharp stakes, and all the panoply of war.
That is the origin of Decimo.
For all my early start, the intolerable heat had again taken the
ascendant before I had fairly entered the plain. Then, it being yet
but morning, I entered from the north the town of Lucca, which is the
neatest, the regularest, the exactest, the most fly-in-amber little
town in the world, with its uncrowded streets, its absurd
fortifications, and its contented silent houses--all like a family at
ease and at rest under its high sun. It is as sharp and trim as its
own map, and that map is as clear as a geometrical problem. Everything
in Lucca is good.
I went with a short shadow, creeping when I could on the eastern side
of the street to save the sunlight; then I came to the main square,
and immediately on my left was the Albergo di Something-or-other, a
fine great hotel, but most unfortunately right facing the blazing sky.
I had to stop outside it to count my money. I counted it wrong and
entered. There I saw the master, who talked French.
'Can you in an hour,' said I, 'give me a meal to my order, then a bed,
though it is early day?' This absurd question I made less absurd by
explaining to him my purpose. How I was walking to Rome and how, being
northern, I was unaccustomed to such heat; how, therefore, I had
missed sleep, and would find it necessary in future to walk mainly by
night. For I had now determined to fill the last few marches up in
darkness, and to sleep out the strong hours of the sun.
All this he understood; I ordered such a meal as men give to beloved
friends returned from wars. I ordered a wine I had known long ago in
the valley of the Saone in the old time of peace before ever the Greek
came to the land. While they cooked it I went to their cool and
splendid cathedral to follow a late Mass. Then I came home and ate
their admirable food and drank the wine which the Burgundians had
trodden upon the hills of gold so many years before. They showed me a
regal kind of a room where a bed with great hangings invited repose.
All my days of marching, the dirty inns, the forests, the nights
abroad, the cold, the mists, the sleeplessness, the faintness, the
dust, the dazzling sun, the Apennines--all my days came over me, and
there fell on me a peaceful weight, as his two hundred years fell upon
Charlemagne in the tower of Saragossa when the battle was done; after
he had curbed the valley of Ebro and christened Bramimonde.
So I slept deeply all day long; and, outside, the glare made a silence
upon the closed shutters, save that little insects darted in the outer
air.
When I woke it was evening. So well had they used me that I paid what
they asked, and, not knowing what money remained over, I left their
town by the southern gate, crossed the railway and took the road.
My way lay under the flank of that mountain whereby the Luccans cannot
see Pisa, or the Pisans cannot see Lucca--it is all one to me, I shall
not live in either town, God willing; and if they are so eager to
squint at one another, in Heaven's name, cannot they be at the pains
to walk round the end of the hill? It is this laziness which is the
ruin of many; but not of pilgrims, for here was I off to cross the
plain of Arno in one night, and reach by morning the mouth and gate of
that valley of the Elsa, which same is a very manifest proof of how
Rome was intended to be the end and centre of all roads, the chief
city of the world, and the Popes' residence--as, indeed, it plainly is
to this day, for all the world to deny at their peril, spiritual,
geographical, historical, sociological, economic, and philosophical.
For if some such primeval and predestinarian quality were not inherent
in the City, how, think you, would the valley of the Serchio--the hot,
droughty, and baking Garfagnana--lead down pointing straight to Rome;
and how would that same line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting
it exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa, itself leading up
directly towards Rome? I say, nowhere in the world is such a
coincidence observable, and they that will not take it for a portent
may go back to their rationalism and consort with microbes and make
their meals off logarithms, washed down with an exact distillation of
the root of minus one; and the peace of fools, that is the deepest and
most balmy of all, be theirs for ever and ever.
Here again you fall into errors as you read, ever expecting something
new; for of that night's march there is nothing to tell, save that it
was cool, full of mist, and an easy matter after the royal
entertainment and sleep of the princely Albergo that dignifies Lucca.
The villages were silent, the moon soon left the sky, and the stars
could not show through the fog, which deepened in the hours after
midnight.
A map I had bought in Lucca made the difficulties of the first part of
the road (though there were many cross-ways) easy enough; and the
second part, in midnight and the early hours, was very plain sailing,
till--having crossed the main line and having, at last, very weary,
come up to the branch railway at a slant from the west and north, I
crossed that also under the full light--I stood fairly in the Elsa
valley and on the highroad which follows the railway straight to
Siena. That long march, I say, had been easy enough in the coolness
and in the dark; but I saw nothing; my interior thoughts alone would
have afforded matter for this part; but of these if you have not had
enough in near six hundred miles of travel, you are a stouter fellow
than I took you for.
Though it was midsummer, the light had come quickly. Long after
sunrise the mist dispersed, and the nature of the valley appeared.
It was in no way mountainous, but easy, pleasant, and comfortable,
bounded by low, rounded hills, having upon them here and there a row
of cypresses against the sky; and it was populous with pleasant farms.
Though the soil was baked and dry, as indeed it is everywhere in this
south, yet little regular streams (or canals) irrigated it and
nourished many trees--- but the deep grass of the north was wanting.
For an hour or more after sunrise I continued my way very briskly;
then what had been the warmth of the early sun turned into the violent
heat of day, and remembering Merlin where he says that those who will
walk by night must sleep by day, and having in my mind the severe
verses of James Bayle, sometime Fellow of St Anne's, that 'in Tuscan
summers as a general rule, the days are sultry but the nights are
cool' (he was no flamboyant poet; he loved the quiet diction of the
right wing of English poetry), and imagining an owlish habit of
sleeping by day could be acquired at once, I lay down under a tree of
a kind I had never seen; and lulled under the pleasant fancy that this
was a picture-tree drawn before the Renaissance, and that I was
reclining in some background landscape of the fifteenth century (for
the scene was of that kind), I fell asleep.
When I woke it was as though I had slept long; but I doubted the
feeling. The young sun still low in the sky, and the shadows not yet
shortened, puzzled me. I looked at my watch, but the dislocation of
habit which night marches produce had left it unwound. It marked a
quarter to three, which was absurd. I took the road somewhat stiffly
and wondering. I passed several small white cottages; there was no
clock in them, and their people were away. At last in a Trattoria, as
they served me with food, a woman told me it was just after seven; I
had slept but an hour.
Outside, the day was intense; already flies had begun to annoy the
darkened room within. Through the half-curtained door the road was
white in the sun, and the railway ran just beyond.
I paid my reckoning, and then, partly for an amusement, I ranged my
remaining pence upon the table, first in the shape of a Maltese cross,
then in a circle (interesting details!). The road lay white in the
sunlight outside, and the railway ran just beyond.
I counted the pence and the silver--there was three francs and a
little over; I remembered the imperial largesse at Lucca, the lordly
spending of great sums, where, now in the pocket of an obsequious man,
the pounds were taking care of themselves. I remembered how at Como I
had been compelled by poverty to enter the train for Milan. How little
was three francs for the remaining twenty-five miles to Siena! The
road lay white in the sunlight, and the railway ran just beyond.
I remembered the pleasing cheque in the post-office of Siena; the
banks of Siena, and the money changers at their counters changing
money at the rate of change.
'If one man,' thought I, 'may take five per cent discount on a sum of
money in the exchange, may not another man take discount off a walk of
over seven hundred miles? May he not cut off it, as his due,
twenty-five miserable little miles in the train?' Sleep coming over me
after my meal increased the temptation. Alas! how true is the great
phrase of Averroes (or it may be Boa-ed-din: anyhow, the Arabic
escapes me, but the meaning is plain enough), that when one has once
fallen, it is easy to fall again (saving always heavy falls from
cliffs and high towers, for after these there is no more falling)....
Examine the horse's knees before you buy him; take no ticket-of-leave
man into your house for charity; touch no prospectus that has
founders' shares, and do not play with firearms or knives and never go
near the water till you know how to swim. Oh! blessed wisdom of the
ages! sole patrimony of the poor! The road lay white in the sun, and
the railway ran just beyond.
If the people of Milo did well to put up a statue in gold to the man
that invented wheels, so should we also put one up in Portland stone
or plaster to the man that invented rails, whose property it is not
only to increase the speed and ease of travel, but also to bring on
slumber as can no drug: not even poppies gathered under a waning moon.
The rails have a rhythm of slight falls and rises... they make a loud
roar like a perpetual torrent; they cover up the mind with a veil.
Once only, when a number of men were shouting 'POGGI-BON-SI,' like a
war-cry to the clank of bronze, did I open my eyes sleepily to see a
hill, a castle wall, many cypresses, and a strange tower bulging out
at the top (such towers I learned were the feature of Tuscany). Then
in a moment, as it seemed, I awoke in the station of Siena, where the
railway ends and goes no farther.
It was still only morning; but the glare was beyond bearing as I
passed through the enormous gate of the town, a gate pierced in high
and stupendous walls that are here guarded by lions. In the narrow
main street there was full shade, and it was made cooler by the
contrast of the blaze on the higher storeys of the northern side. The
wonders of Siena kept sleep a moment from my mind. I saw their great
square where a tower of vast height marks the guildhall. I heard Mass
in a chapel of their cathedral: a chapel all frescoed, and built, as
it were, out of doors, and right below the altar-end or choir. I noted
how the city stood like a queen of hills dominating all Tuscany: above
the Elsa northward, southward above the province round Mount Amiato.
And this great mountain I saw also hazily far off on the horizon. I
suffered the vulgarities of the main street all in English and
American, like a show. I took my money and changed it; then, having so
passed not a full hour, and oppressed by weariness, I said to myself:
'After all, my business is not with cities, and already I have seen
far off the great hill whence one can see far off the hills that
overhang Rome.'
With this in my mind I wandered out for a quiet place, and found it in
a desolate green to the north of the city, near a huge, old red-brick
church like a barn. A deep shadow beneath it invited me in spite of
the scant and dusty grass, and in this country no one disturbs the
wanderer. There, lying down, I slept without dreams till evening.
AUCTOR. Turn to page 94.
LECTOR. I have it. It is not easy to watch the book in two places at
once; but pray continue.
AUCTOR. Note the words from the eighth to the tenth lines.
LECTOR. Why?
AUCTOR. They will make what follows seem less abrupt.
Once there was a man dining by himself at the Cafe Anglais, in the
days when people went there. It was a full night, and he sat alone at
a small table, when there entered a very big man in a large fur coat.
The big man looked round annoyed, because there was no room, and the
first man very courteously offered him a seat at his little table.
They sat down and ate and talked of several things; among others, of
Bureaucracy. The first maintained that Bureaucracy was the curse of
France.
'Men are governed by it like sheep. The administrator, however humble,
is a despot; most people will even run forward to meet him halfway,
like the servile dogs they are,' said he.
'No,' answered the Man in the Big Fur Coat, 'I should say men were
governed just by the ordinary human sense of authority. I have no
theories. I say they recognize authority and obey it. Whether it is
bureaucratic or not is merely a question of form.'
At this moment there came in a tall, rather stiff Englishman. He also
was put out at finding no room. The two men saw the manager approach
him; a few words were passed, and a card; then the manager suddenly
smiled, bowed, smirked, and finally went up to the table and begged
that the Duke of Sussex might be allowed to share it. The Duke hoped
he did not incommode these gentlemen. They assured him that, on the
contrary, they esteemed his presence a favour.
'It is our prerogative,' said the Man in the Big Fur Coat, 'to be the
host Paris entertaining her Guest.'
They would take no denial; they insisted on the Duke's dining with
them, and they told him what they had just been discussing. The Duke
listened to their theories with some _morgue,_ much _spleen,_ and no
little _phlegm,_ but with _perfect courtesy,_ and then, towards the
coffee, told them in fluent French with a strong accent, his own
opinion. (He had had eight excellent courses; Yquem with his fish, the
best Chambertin during the dinner, and a glass of wonderful champagne
with his dessert.) He spoke as follows, with a slight and rather hard
smile:
'My opinion may seem to you impertinent, but I believe nothing more
subtly and powerfully affects men than the aristocratic feeling. Do
not misunderstand me,' he added, seeing that they would protest; 'it
is not my own experience alone that guides me. All history bears
witness to the same truth.'
The simple-minded Frenchmen put down this infatuation to the Duke's
early training, little knowing that our English men of rank are the
simplest fellows in the world, and are quite indifferent to their
titles save in business matters.
The Frenchmen paid the bill, and they all three went on to the
Boulevard.
'Now,' said the first man to his two companions, 'I will give you a
practical example of what I meant when I said that Bureaucracy
governed mankind.'
He went up to the wall of the Credit Lyonnais, put the forefinger of
either hand against it, about twenty-five centimetres apart, and at a
level of about a foot above his eyes. Holding his fingers thus he
gazed at them, shifting them slightly from time to time and moving his
glance from one to the other rapidly. A crowd gathered. In a few
moments a pleasant elderly, short, and rather fat gentleman in the
crowd came forward, and, taking off his hat, asked if he could do
anything for him.
'Why,' said our friend, 'the fact is I am an engineer (section D of
the Public Works Department) and I have to make an important
measurement in connexion with the Apothegm of the Bilateral which runs
to-night precisely through this spot. My fingers now mark exactly the
concentric of the secondary focus whence the Radius Vector should be
drawn, but I find that (like a fool) I have left my Double Refractor
in the cafe hard by. I dare not go for fear of losing the place I have
marked; yet I can get no further without my Double Refractor.'
'Do not let that trouble you,' said the short, stout stranger; 'I will
be delighted to keep the place exactly marked while you run for your
instrument.'
The crowd was now swelled to a considerable size; it blocked up the
pavement, and was swelled every moment by the arrival of the curious.
The little fat elderly man put his fingers exactly where the other's
had been, effecting the exchange with a sharp gesture; and each
watched intently to see that it was right to within a millimetre. The
attitude was constrained. The elderly man smiled, and begged the
engineer not to be alarmed. So they left him with his two forefingers
well above his head, precisely twenty-five centimetres apart, and
pressing their tips against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais. Then the
three friends slipped out of the crowd and pursued their way.
'Let us go to the theatre,' said the experimenter, 'and when we come
back I warrant you will agree with my remarks on Bureaucracy.'
They went to hear the admirable marble lines of Corneille. For three
hours they were absorbed by the classics, and, when they returned, a
crowd, now enormous, was surging all over the Boulevard, stopping the
traffic and filled with a noise like the sea. Policemen were attacking
it with the utmost energy, but still it grew and eddied; and in the
centre--a little respectful space kept empty around him--still
stretched the poor little fat elderly man, a pitiable sight. His knees
were bent, his head wagged and drooped with extreme fatigue, he was
the colour of old blotting-paper; but still he kept the tips of his
two forefingers exactly twenty-five centimetres apart, well above his
head, and pressed against the wall of the Credit Lyonnais.
'You will not match that with your aristocratic sentiment!' said the
author of the scene in pardonable triumph.
'I am not so sure,' answered the Duke of Sussex. He pulled out his
watch. 'It is midnight,' he said, 'and I must be off; but let me tell
you before we part that you have paid for a most expensive dinner, and
have behaved all night with an extravagant deference under the
impression that I was the Duke of Sussex. As a fact my name is Jerks,
and I am a commercial traveller in the linseed oil line; and I wish
you the best of good evenings.'
'Wait a moment,' said the Man in the Big Fur Coat; 'my theory of the
Simple Human Sense of Authority still holds. I am a detective officer,
and you will both be good enough to follow me to the police station.'
And so they did, and the Engineer was fined fifty francs in
correctional, and the Duke of Sussex was imprisoned for ten days, with
interdiction of domicile for six months; the first indeed under the
Prefectorial Decree of the 18th of November 1843, but the second under
the law of the 12th germinal of the year VIII.
In this way I have got over between twenty and thirty miles of road
which were tramped in the dark, and the description of which would
have plagued you worse than a swarm of hornets.
Oh, blessed interlude! no struggling moon, no mist, no long-winded
passages upon the genial earth, no the sense of the night, no marvels
of the dawn, no rhodomontade, no religion, no rhetoric, no sleeping
villages, no silent towns (there was one), no rustle of trees--just a
short story, and there you have a whole march covered as though a
brigade had swung down it. A new day has come, and the sun has risen
over the detestable parched hillocks of this downward way.
No, no, Lector! Do not blame me that Tuscany should have passed
beneath me unnoticed, as the monotonous sea passes beneath a boat in
full sail. Blame all those days of marching; hundreds upon hundreds of
miles that exhausted the powers of the mind. Blame the fiery and angry
sky of Etruria, that compelled most of my way to be taken at night.
Blame St Augustine, who misled me in his Confessions by talking like
an African of 'the icy shores of Italy'; or blame Rome, that now more
and more drew me to Herself as She approached from six to five, from
five to four, from four to three--now She was but _three_ days off.
The third sun after that I now saw rising would shine upon the City.
I did indeed go forward a little in the heat, but it was useless.
After an hour I abandoned it. It was not so much the sun, though that
was intemperate and deadly; it was rather the inhuman aspect of the
earth which made me despair. It was as though the soil had been left
imperfect and rough after some cataclysm; it reminded me of those bad
lands in the west of America, where the desert has no form, and where
the crumbling and ashy look of things is more abhorrent than their
mere desolation. As soon march through evil dreams!
The north is the place for men. Eden was there; and the four rivers of
Paradise are the Seine, the Oise, the Thames, and the Arun; there are
grasses there, and the trees are generous, and the air is an unnoticed
pleasure. The waters brim up to the edges of the fields. But for this
bare Tuscany I was never made.
How far I had gone I could not tell, nor precisely how much farther
San Quirico, the neighbouring town, might be. The imperfect map I had
bought at Siena was too minute to give me clear indications. I was
content to wait for evening, and then to go on till I found it. An
hour or so in the shade of a row of parched and dusty bushes I lay and
ate and drank my wine, and smoked, and then all day I slept, and woke
a while, and slept again more deeply. But how people sleep and wake,
if you do not yet know it after so much of this book you never will.
It was perhaps five o'clock, or rather more, when I rose unhappily and
took up the ceaseless road.
Even the goodness of the Italian nature seemed parched up in those dry
hollows. At an inn where I ate they shouted at me, thinking in that
way to make me understand; and their voices were as harsh as the
grating of metal against stone. A mile farther I crossed a lonely line
of railway; then my map told me where I was, and I went wearily up an
indefinite slope under the declining sun, and thought it outrageous
that only when the light had gone was there any tolerable air in this
country.
Soon the walls of San Quirico, partly ruinous, stood above the fields
(for the smallest places here have walls); as I entered its gate the
sun set, and as though the cool, coming suddenly, had a magic in it,
everything turned kinder. A church that could wake interest stood at
the entry of the town; it had stone lions on its steps, and the
pillars were so carved as to resemble knotted ropes. There for the
first time I saw in procession one of those confraternities which in
Italy bury the dead; they had long and dreadful hoods over their
heads, with slits for the eyes. I spoke to the people of San Quirico,
and they to me. They were upstanding, and very fine and noble in the
lines of the face. On their walls is set a marble tablet, on which it
is registered that the people of Tuscany, being asked whether they
would have their hereditary Duke or the House of Savoy, voted for the
latter by such and such a great majority; and this kind of tablet I
afterwards found was common to all these small towns. Then passing
down their long street I came, at the farther gate, to a great sight,
which the twilight still permitted me to receive in its entirety.
For San Quirico is built on the edge of a kind of swell in the land,
and here where I stood one looked over the next great wave; for the
shape of the view was, on a vast scale, just what one sees from a
lonely boat looking forward over a following sea.
The trough of the wave was a shallow purple valley, its arid quality
hidden by the kindly glimmer of evening; few trees stood in it to
break its sweep, and its irregularities and mouldings were just those
of a sweep of water after a gale. The crest of the wave beyond was
seventeen miles away. It had, as have also such crests at sea, one
highest, toppling peak in its long line, and this, against the clear
sky, one could see to be marked by buildings. These buildings were the
ruined castle and walls of Radicofani, and it lay straight on my way
to Rome.
It is a strange thing, arresting northern eyes, to see towns thus
built on summits up into the sky, and this height seemed the more
fantastic because it was framed. A row of cypress trees stood on
either side of the road where it fell from San Quirico, and, exactly
between these, this high crest, a long way off, was set as though by
design.
With more heart in me, and tempted by such an outline as one might be
by the prospect of adventure, I set out to cross the great bare run of
the valley. As I went, the mountain of Amiato came more and more
nearly abreast of me in the west; in its foothills near me were
ravines and unexpected rocks; upon one of them hung a village. I
watched its church and one tall cypress next it, as they stood black
against the last of daylight. Then for miles I went on the dusty way,
and crossed by old bridges watercourses in which stood nothing but
green pools; and the night deepened.
It was when I had crossed the greater part of the obscure plain, at
its lowest dip and not far from the climb up to Radicofani, that I saw
lights shining in a large farmhouse, and though it was my business to
walk by night, yet I needed companionship, so I went in.
There in a very large room, floored with brick and lit by one candle,
were two fine old peasants, with faces like apostles, playing a game
of cards. There also was a woman playing with a strong boy child,
that could not yet talk: and the child ran up to me. Nothing could
persuade the master of the house but that I was a very poor man who
needed sleep, and so good and generous was this old man that my
protests seemed to him nothing but the excuses and shame of poverty.
He asked me where I was going. I said, 'To Rome.' He came out with a
lantern to the stable, and showed me there a manger full of hay,
indicating that I might sleep in it... His candle flashed upon the
great silent oxen standing in rows; their enormous horns, three times
the length of what we know in England, filled me with wonder... Well!
(may it count to me as gain!), rather than seem to offend him I lay
down in that manger, though I had no more desire to sleep than has the
flittermouse in our Sussex gloamings; also I was careful to offer no
money, for that is brutality. When he had left me I took the
opportunity for a little rest, and lay on my back in the hay
wide-awake and staring at darkness.
The great oxen champed and champed their food with a regular sound; I
remembered the steerage in a liner, the noise of the sea and the
regular screw, for this it exactly resembled. I considered in the
darkness the noble aspect of these beasts as I had seen them in the
lantern light, and I determined when I got to Rome to buy two such
horns, and to bring them to England and have them mounted for drinking
horns--great drinking horns, a yard deep--and to get an engraver to
engrave a motto for each. On the first I would have--
King Alfred was in Wantage born
He drank out of a ram's horn.
Here is a better man than he,
Who drinks deeper, as you see.
Thus my friends drinking out of it should lift up their hearts and no
longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for
a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the
year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and
taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care-
for-the-rules, this seemed to suit me--
_Salve, cornu cornuum!
Cornutorum vis Boum.
Munus excellent Deum!
Gregis o praesidium!
Sitis desiderium!
Dignum cornuum cornu
Romae memor salve tu!
Tibi cornuum cornuto--_
LECTOR. That means nothing.
AUCTOR. Shut up!
_Tibi cornuum cornuto
Tibi clamo, te saluto
Salve cornu cornuum!
Fortunatam da Domunt!_
And after this cogitation and musing I got up quietly, so as not to
offend the peasant: and I crept out, and so upwards on to the crest of
the hill.
But when, after several miles of climbing, I neared the summit, it was
already beginning to be light. The bareness and desert grey of the
distance I had crossed stood revealed in a colourless dawn, only the
Mont' Amiata, now somewhat to the northward, was more gentle, and
softened the scene with distant woods. Between it and this height ran
a vague river-bed as dry as the stones of a salt beach.
The sun rose as I passed under the ruined walls of the castle. In the
little town itself, early as was the hour, many people were stirring.
One gave me good-morning--a man of singular character, for here, in
the very peep of day, he was sitting on a doorstep, idle, lazy and
contented, as though it was full noon. Another was yoking oxen; a
third going out singing to work in the fields.
I did not linger in this crow's nest, but going out by the low and
aged southern gate, another deeper valley, even drier and more dead
than the last, appeared under the rising sun. It was enough to make
one despair! And when I thought of the day's sleep in that wilderness,
of the next night's toil through it--
LECTOR. What about the Brigand of Radicofani of whom you spoke in
Lorraine, and of whom I am waiting to hear?
AUCTOR. What about him? Why, he was captured long ago, and has since
died of old age. I am surprised at your interrupting me with such
questions. Pray ask for no more tales till we get to the really
absorbing story of the Hungry Student.
Well, as I was saying, I was in some despair at the sight of that
valley, which had to be crossed before I could reach the town of
Acquapendente, or Hanging-water, which I knew to lie somewhere on the
hills beyond. The sun was conquering me, and I was looking hopelessly
for a place to sleep, when a cart drawn by two oxen at about one mile
an hour came creaking by. The driver was asleep, his head on the shady
side. The devil tempted me, and without one struggle against
temptation, nay with cynical and congratulatory feelings, I jumped up
behind, and putting my head also on the shady side (there were soft
sacks for a bed) I very soon was pleasantly asleep.
We lay side by side for hour after hour, and the day rose on to noon;
the sun beat upon our feet, but our heads were in the shade and we
slept heavily a good and honest sleep: he thinking that he was alone,
but I knowing that I was in company (a far preferable thing), and I
was right and he was wrong. And the heat grew, and sleep came out of
that hot sun more surely than it does out of the night air in the
north. But no dreams wander under the noon.
From time to time one or the other of us would open our eyes drowsily
and wonder, but sleep was heavy on us both, and our minds were sunk in
calm like old hulls in the dark depths of the sea where there are no
storms.
We neither of us really woke until, at the bottom of the hill which
rises into Acquapendente, the oxen stopped. This halt woke us up;
first me and then my companion. He looked at me a moment and laughed.
He seemed to have thought all this while that I was some country
friend of his who had taken a lift; and I, for my part, had made more
or less certain that he was a good fellow who would do me no harm. I
was right, and he was wrong. I knew not what offering to make him to
compensate him for this trouble which his heavy oxen had taken. After
some thought I brought a cigar out of my pocket, which he smoked with
extreme pleasure. The oxen meanwhile had been urged up the slow hill,
and it was in this way that we reached the famous town of
Acquapendente. But why it should be called famous is more than I can
understand. It may be that in one of those narrow streets there is a
picture or a church, or one of those things which so attract
unbelieving men. To the pilgrim it is simply a group of houses. Into
one of these I went, and, upon my soul, I have nothing to say of it
except that they furnished me with food.
I do not pretend to have counted the flies, though they were numerous;
and, even had I done so, what interest would the number have, save to
the statisticians? Now as these are patient men and foolish, I
heartily recommend them to go and count the flies for themselves.
Leaving this meal then, this town and this people (which were all of a
humdrum sort), and going out by the gate, the left side of which is
made up of a church, I went a little way on the short road to San
Lorenzo, but I had no intention of going far, for (as you know by this
time) the night had become my day and the day my night.
I found a stream running very sluggish between tall trees, and this
sight sufficiently reminded me of my own country to permit repose.
Lying down there I slept till the end of the day, or rather to that
same time of evening which had now become my usual waking hour... And
now tell me, Lector, shall I leave out altogether, or shall I give you
some description of, the next few miles to San Lorenzo?
LECTOR. Why, if I were you I would put the matter shortly and simply,
for it is the business of one describing a pilgrimage or any other
matter not to puff himself up with vain conceit, nor to be always
picking about for picturesque situations, but to set down plainly and
shortly what he has seen and heard, describing the whole matter.
AUCTOR. But remember, Lector, that the artist is known not only by
what he puts in but by what he leaves out.
LECTOR. That is all very well for the artist, but you have no business
to meddle with such people.
AUCTOR. How then would you write such a book if you had the writing of
it?
LECTOR. I would not introduce myself at all; I would not tell stories
at random, nor go in for long descriptions of emotions, which I am
sure other men have felt as well as I. I would be careful to visit
those things my readers had already heard of (AUCTOR. The pictures!
the remarkable pictures! All that is meant by culture! The brown
photographs! Oh! Lector, indeed I have done you a wrong!), and I would
certainly not have the bad taste to say anything upon religion. Above
all, I would be terse.
AUCTOR. I see. You would not pile words one on the other, qualifying,
exaggerating, conditioning, superlativing, diminishing, connecting,
amplifying, condensing, mouthing, and glorifying the mere sound: you
would be terse. You should be known for your self-restraint. There
should be no verbosity in your style (God forbid!), still less
pomposity, animosity, curiosity, or ferocity; you would have it neat,
exact, and scholarly, and, above all, chiselled to the nail. A fig
(say you), the pip of a fig, for the rambling style. You would be led
into no hilarity, charity, vulgarity, or barbarity. Eh! my jolly
Lector? You would simply say what you had to say?
LECTOR. Precisely; I would say a plain thing in a plain way.
AUCTOR. So you think one can say a plain thing in a plain way? You
think that words mean nothing more than themselves, and that you can
talk without ellipsis, and that customary phrases have not their
connotations? You think that, do you? Listen then to the tale of Mr
Benjamin Franklin Hard, a kindly merchant of Cincinnati, O., who had
no particular religion, but who had accumulated a fortune of six
hundred thousand dollars, and who had a horror of breaking the
Sabbath. He was not 'a kind husband and a good father,' for he was
unmarried; nor had he any children. But he was all that those words
connote.
This man Hard at the age of fifty-four retired from business, and
determined to treat himself to a visit to Europe. He had not been in
Europe five weeks before he ran bang up against the Catholic Church.
He was never more surprised in his life. I do not mean that I have
exactly weighed all his surprises all his life through. I mean that he
was very much surprised indeed--and that is all that these words
connote.
He studied the Catholic Church with extreme interest. He watched High
Mass at several places (hoping it might be different). He thought it
was what it was not, and then, contrariwise, he thought it was not
what it was. He talked to poor Catholics, rich Catholics, middle-class
Catholics, and elusive, wellborn, penniless, neatly dressed,
successful Catholics; also to pompous, vain Catholics; humble,
uncertain Catholics; sneaking, pad-footed Catholics; healthy, howling,
combative Catholics; doubtful, shoulder-shrugging, but devout
Catholics; fixed, crabbed, and dangerous Catholics; easy, jovial, and
shone-upon-by-the-heavenly-light Catholics; subtle Catholics; strange
Catholics, and _(quod tibi manifeste absurdum videtur)_ intellectual,
_pince-nez,_ jejune, twisted, analytical, yellow, cranky, and
introspective Catholics: in fine, he talked to all Catholics. And
when I say 'all Catholics' I do not mean that he talked to every
individual Catholic, but that he got a good, integrative grip of the
Church militant, which is all that the words connote.
Well, this man Hard got to know, among others, a certain good priest
that loved a good bottle of wine, a fine deep dish of_ poulet a la
casserole, _and a kind of egg done with cream in a little platter; and
eating such things, this priest said to him one day: 'Mr Hard, what
you want is to read some books on Catholicism.' And Hard, who was on
the point of being received into the Church as the final solution of
human difficulties, thought it would be a very good thing to instruct
his mind before baptism. So he gave the priest a note to a bookseller
whom an American friend had told him of; and this American friend had
said:
'You will find Mr Fingle (for such was the bookseller's name) a
hard-headed, honest, business man. He can say a _plain thing in a
plain way.'_
'Here,' said Mr Hard to the priest, 'is ten pounds. Send it to this
bookseller Fingle and he shall choose books on Catholicism to that
amount, and you shall receive them, and I will come and read them here
with you.'
So the priest sent the money, and in four days the books came, and Mr
Hard and the priest opened the package, and these were the books
inside:
_Auricular Confession:_ a History. By a Brand Saved from the Burning.
_Isabella; or, The Little Female Jesuit._ By 'Hephzibah'.
_Elisha MacNab:_ a Tale of the French Huguenots.
_England and Rome._ By the Rev. Ebenezer Catchpole of Emmanuel,
Birmingham.
_Nuns and Nunneries._ By 'Ruth', with a Preface by Miss Carran, lately
rescued from a Canadian Convent.
_History of the Inquisition._ By Llorente.
_The Beast with Seven Heads; or, the Apocalyptical Warning._
_No Truce with the Vatican._
_The True Cause of Irish Disaffection._
_Decline of the Latin Nations._
_Anglo-Saxons the Chosen Race,_ and their connexion with the Ten Lost
Tribes: with a map.
Finally, a very large book at the bottom of the case called _Giant
Pope._
And it was no use asking for the money back or protesting. Mr Fingle
was an honest, straightforward man, who said a plain thing in a plain
way. They had left him to choose a suitable collection of books on
Catholicism, and he had chosen the best he knew. And thus did Mr Hard
(who has recently given a hideous font to the new Catholic church at
Bismarckville) learn the importance of estimating what words connote.
LECTOR. But all that does not excuse an intolerable prolixity?
AUCTOR. Neither did I say it did, dear Lector. My object was merely to
get you to San Lorenzo where I bought that wine, and where, going out
of the gate on the south, I saw suddenly the wide lake of Bolsena all
below.
It is a great sheet like a sea; but as one knows one is on a high
plateau, and as there is but a short dip down to it; as it is round
and has all about it a rim of low even hills, therefore one knows it
for an old and gigantic crater now full of pure water; and there are
islands in it and palaces on the islands. Indeed it was an impression
of silence and recollection, for the water lay all upturned to heaven,
and, in the sky above me, the moon at her quarter hung still pale in
the daylight, waiting for glory.
I sat on the coping of a wall, drank a little of my wine, ate a little
bread and sausage; but still song demanded some outlet in the cool
evening, and companionship was more of an appetite in me than
landscape. Please God, I had become southern and took beauty for
granted.
Anyhow, seeing a little two-wheeled cart come through the gate,
harnessed to a ramshackle little pony, bony and hard, and driven by a
little, brown, smiling, and contented old fellow with black hair, I
made a sign to him and he stopped.
This time there was no temptation of the devil; if anything the
advance was from my side. I was determined to ride, and I sprang up
beside the driver. We raced down the hill, clattering and banging and
rattling like a piece of ordnance, and he, my brother, unasked began
to sing. I sang in turn. He sang of Italy, I of four countries:
America, France, England, and Ireland. I could not understand his
songs nor he mine, but there was wine in common between us, and
_salami_ and a merry heart, bread which is the bond of all mankind,
and that prime solution of ill-ease--I mean the forgetfulness of
money.
That was a good drive, an honest drive, a human aspiring drive, a
drive of Christians, a glorifying and uplifted drive, a drive worthy
of remembrance for ever. The moon has shone on but few like it though
she is old; the lake of Bolsena has glittered beneath none like it
since the Etruscans here unbended after the solemnities of a triumph.
It broke my vow to pieces; there was not a shadow of excuse for this
use of wheels: it was done openly and wantonly in the face of the wide
sky for pleasure. And what is there else but pleasure, and to what
else does beauty move on? Not I hope to contemplation! A hideous
oriental trick! No, but to loud notes and comradeship and the riot of
galloping, and laughter ringing through old trees. Who would change
(says Aristippus of Pslinthon) the moon and all the stars for so much
wine as can be held in the cup of a bottle upturned? The honest man!
And in his time (note you) they did not make the devilish deep and
fraudulent bottoms they do now that cheat you of half your liquor.
Moreover if I broke my vows (which is a serious matter), and if I
neglected to contemplate the heavens (for which neglect I will confess
to no one, not even to a postulate sub-deacon; it is no sin; it is a
healthy omission), if (I say) I did this, I did what peasants do. And
what is more, by drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves no
Mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of, St Peter looks with a
kindly eye.
Now, just at the very entry to Bolsena, when we had followed the
lovely lake some time, my driver halted and began to turn up a lane to
a farm or villa; so I, bidding him good-night, crossed a field and
stood silent by the lake and watched for a long time the water
breaking on a tiny shore, and the pretty miniatures of waves. I stood
there till the stars came out and the moon shone fully; then I went
towards Bolsena under its high gate which showed in the darkness, and
under its castle on the rock. There, in a large room which was not
quite an inn, a woman of great age and dignity served me with fried
fish from the lake, and the men gathered round me and attempted to
tell me of the road to Rome, while I in exchange made out to them as
much by gestures as by broken words the crossing of the Alps and the
Apennines.
Then, after my meal, one of the men told me I needed sleep; that there
were no rooms in that house (as I said, it was not an inn), but that
across the way he would show me one he had for hire. I tried to say
that my plan was to walk by night. They all assured me he would charge
me a reasonable sum. I insisted that the day was too hot for walking.
They told me, did these Etruscans, that I need fear no extortion from
so honest a man.
Certainly it is not easy to make everybody understand everything, and
I had had experience already up in the mountains, days before, of how
important it is not to be misunderstood when one is wandering in a
foreign country, poor and ill-clad. I therefore accepted the offer,
and, what was really very much to my regret, I paid the money he
demanded. I even so far fell in with the spirit of the thing as to
sleep a certain number of hours (for after all, my sleep that day in
the cart had been very broken, and instead of resting throughout the
whole of the heat I had taken a meal at Acquapendente). But I woke up
not long after midnight--perhaps between one and two o'clock--and went
out along the borders of the lake.
The moon had set; I wish I could have seen her hanging at the quarter
in the clear sky of that high crater, dipping into the rim of its
inland sea. It was perceptibly cold. I went on the road quite slowly,
till it began to climb, and when the day broke I found myself in a
sunken lane leading up to the town of Montefiascone.
The town lay on its hill in the pale but growing light. A great dome
gave it dignity, and a castle overlooked the lake. It was built upon
the very edge and lip of the volcano-cup commanding either side.
I climbed up this sunken lane towards it, not knowing what might be
beyond, when, at the crest, there shone before me in the sunrise one
of those unexpected and united landscapes which are among the glories
of Italy. They have changed the very mind in a hundred northern
painters, when men travelled hither to Rome to learn their art, and
coming in by her mountain roads saw, time and again, the set views of
plains like gardens, surrounded by sharp mountain-land and framed.
The road did not pass through the town; the grand though crumbling
gate of entry lay up a short straight way to the right, and below,
where the road continued down the slope, was a level of some eight
miles full of trees diminishing in distance. At its further side an
ample mountain, wooded, of gentle flattened outline, but high and
majestic, barred the way to Rome. It was yet another of those
volcanoes, fruitful after death, which are the mark of Latium: and it
held hidden, as did that larger and more confused one on the rim of
which I stood, a lake in its silent crater. But that lake, as I was to
find, was far smaller than the glittering sea of Bolsena, whose shores
now lay behind me.
The distance and the hill that bounded it should in that climate have
stood clear in the pure air, but it was yet so early that a thin haze
hung over the earth, and the sun had not yet controlled it: it was
even chilly. I could not catch the towers of Viterbo, though I knew
them to stand at the foot of the far mountain. I went down the road,
and in half-an-hour or so was engaged upon the straight line crossing
the plain.
I wondered a little how the road would lie with regard to the town,
and looked at my map for guidance, but it told me little. It was too
general, taking in all central Italy, and even large places were
marked only by small circles.
When I approached Viterbo I first saw an astonishing wall,
perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It
stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much
higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the
severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. For they had no
ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though many of age. Tall
towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation,
stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its
curtain. Then nearer by, one saw that it was not a huge castle, but
the wall of a city, for at a corner it went sharp round to contain the
town, and through one uneven place I saw houses. Many men were walking
in the roads alongside these walls, and there were gates pierced in
them whereby the citizens went in and out of the city as bees go in
and out of the little opening in a hive.
But my main road to Rome did not go through Viterbo, it ran alongside
of the eastern wall, and I debated a little with myself whether I
would go in or no. It was out of my way, and I had not entered
Montefiascone for that reason. On the other hand, Viterbo was a famous
place. It is all very well to neglect Florence and Pisa because they
are some miles off the straight way, but Viterbo right under one's
hand it is a pity to miss. Then I needed wine and food for the later
day in the mountain. Yet, again, it was getting hot. It was past
eight, the mist had long ago receded, and I feared delay. So I mused
on the white road under the tall towers and dead walls of Viterbo, and
ruminated on an unimportant thing. Then curiosity did what reason
could not do, and I entered by a gate.
The streets were narrow, tortuous, and alive, all shaded by the great
houses, and still full of the cold of the night. The noise of
fountains echoed in them, and the high voices of women and the cries
of sellers. Every house had in it something fantastic and peculiar;
humanity had twined into this place like a natural growth, and the
separate thoughts of men, both those that were alive there and those
dead before them, had decorated it all. There were courtyards with
blinding whites of sunlit walls above, themselves in shadow; and there
were many carvings and paintings over doors. I had come into a great
living place after the loneliness of the road.
There, in the first wide street I could find, I bought sausage and
bread and a great bottle of wine, and then quitting Viterbo, I left it
by the same gate and took the road.
For a long while yet I continued under the walls, noting in one place
a thing peculiar to the Middle Ages, I mean the apse of a church built
right into the wall as the old Cathedral of St Stephen's was in Paris.
These, I suppose, enemies respected if they could; for I have noticed
also that in castles the chapel is not hidden, but stands out from the
wall. So be it. Your fathers and mine were there in the fighting, but
we do not know their names, and I trust and hope yours spared the
altars as carefully as mine did.
The road began to climb the hill, and though the heat increased--for
in Italy long before nine it is glaring noon to us northerners (and
that reminds me: your fathers and mine, to whom allusion has been made
above {as they say in the dull history books--[LECTOR. How many more
interior brackets are we to have? Is this algebra? AUCTOR. You
yourself, Lector, are responsible for the worst.]} your fathers and
mine coming down into this country to fight, as was their annual
custom, must have had a plaguy time of it, when you think that they
could not get across the Alps till summer-time, and then had to hack
and hew, and thrust and dig, and slash and climb, and charge and puff,
and blow and swear, and parry and receive, and aim and dodge, and butt
and run for their lives at the end, under an unaccustomed sun. No
wonder they saw visions, the dear people! They are dead now, and we do
not even know their names.)--Where was I?
LECTOR. You were at the uninteresting remark that the heat was
increasing.
AUCTOR. Precisely. I remember. Well, the heat was increasing, but it
seemed far more bearable than it had been in the earlier places; in
the oven of the Garfagnana or in the deserts of Siena. For with the
first slopes of the mountain a forest of great chestnut trees
appeared, and it was so cool under these that there was even moss, as
though I were back again in my own country where there are full rivers
in summer-time, deep meadows, and all the completion of home.
Also the height may have begun to tell on the air, but not much, for
when the forest was behind me, and when I had come to a bare heath
sloping more gently upwards--a glacis in front of the topmost bulwark
of the round mountain--- I was oppressed with thirst, and though it
was not too hot to sing (for I sang, and two lonely carabinieri passed
me singing, and we recognized as we saluted each other that the
mountain was full of songs), yet I longed for a bench, a flagon, and
shade.
And as I longed, a little house appeared, and a woman in the shade
sewing, and an old man. Also a bench and a table, and a tree over it.
There I sat down and drank white wine and water many times. The woman
charged me a halfpenny, and the old man would not talk. He did not
take his old age garrulously. It was his business, not mine; but I
should dearly have liked to have talked to him in Lingua Franca, and
to have heard him on the story of his mountain: where it was haunted,
by what, and on which nights it was dangerous to be abroad. Such as it
was, there it was. I left them, and shall perhaps never see them
again.
The road was interminable, and the crest, from which I promised myself
the view of the crater-lake, was always just before me, and was never
reached. A little spring, caught in a hollow log, refreshed a meadow
on the right. Drinking there again, I wondered if I should go on or
rest; but I was full of antiquity, and a memory in the blood, or what
not, impelled me to see the lake in the crater before I went to sleep:
after a few hundred yards this obsession was satisfied.
I passed between two banks, where the road had been worn down at the
crest of the volcano's rim; then at once, far below, in a circle of
silent trees with here and there a vague shore of marshy land, I saw
the Pond of Venus: some miles of brooding water, darkened by the dark
slopes around it. Its darkness recalled the dark time before the dawn
of our saved and happy world.
At its hither end a hill, that had once been a cone in the crater,
stood out all covered with a dense wood. It was the Hill of Venus.
There was no temple, nor no sacrifice, nor no ritual for the Divinity,
save this solemn attitude of perennial silence; but under the
influence which still remained and gave the place its savour, it was
impossible to believe that the gods were dead. There were no men in
that hollow; nor was there any memory of men, save of men dead these
thousands of years. There was no life of visible things. The mind
released itself and was in touch with whatever survives of conquered
but immortal Spirits.
Thus ready for worship, and in a mood of adoration; filled also with
the genius which inhabits its native place and is too subtle or too
pure to suffer the effect of time, I passed down the ridge-way of the
mountain rim, and came to the edge overlooking that arena whereon was
first fought out and decided the chief destiny of the world.
For all below was the Campagna. Names that are at the origin of things
attached to every cleft and distant rock beyond the spreading level,
or sanctified the gleams of rivers. There below me was Veii; beyond,
in the Wall of the Apennines, only just escaped from clouds, was Tibur
that dignified the ravine at the edge of their rising; that crest to
the right was Tusculum, and far to the south, but clear, on a mountain
answering my own, was the mother of the City, Alba Longa. The Tiber, a
dense, brown fog rolling over and concealing it, was the god of the
wide plain.
There and at that moment I should have seen the City. I stood up on
the bank and shaded my eyes, straining to catch the dome at least in
the sunlight; but I could not, for Rome was hidden by the low Sabinian
hills.
Soracte I saw there--Soracte, of which I had read as a boy. It stood
up like an acropolis, but it was a citadel for no city. It stood
alone, like that soul which once haunted its recesses and prophesied
the conquering advent of the northern kings. I saw the fields where
the tribes had lived that were the first enemies of the imperfect
state, before it gave its name to the fortunes of the Latin race.
Dark Etruria lay behind me, forgotten in the backward of my march: a
furnace and a riddle out of which religion came to the Romans--a place
that has left no language. But below me, sunlit and easy (as it seemed
in the cooler air of that summit), was the arena upon which were first
fought out the chief destinies of the world.
And I still looked down upon it, wondering.
Was it in so small a space that all the legends of one's childhood
were acted? Was the defence of the bridge against so neighbouring and
petty an alliance? Were they peasants of a group of huts that handed
down the great inheritance of discipline, and made an iron channel
whereby, even to us, the antique virtues could descend as a living
memory? It must be so; for the villages and ruins in one landscape
comprised all the first generations of the history of Rome. The stones
we admire, the large spirit of the last expression came from that
rough village and sprang from the broils of that one plain; Rome was
most vigorous before it could speak. So a man's verse, and all he has,
are but the last outward appearance, late and already rigid, of an
earlier, more plastic, and diviner fire.
'Upon this arena,' I still said to myself, 'were first fought out the
chief destinies of the world'; and so, played upon by an unending
theme, I ate and drank in a reverie, still wondering, and then lay
down beneath the shade of a little tree that stood alone upon that
edge of a new world. And wondering, I fell asleep under the morning
sun.
But this sleep was not like the earlier oblivions that had refreshed
my ceaseless journey, for I still dreamt as I slept of what I was to
see, and visions of action without thought--pageants and
mysteries--surrounded my spirit; and across the darkness of a mind
remote from the senses there passed whatever is wrapped up in the
great name of Rome.
When I woke the evening had come. A haze had gathered upon the plain.
The road fell into Ronciglione, and dreams surrounded it upon every
side. For the energy of the body those hours of rest had made a fresh
and enduring vigour; for the soul no rest was needed. It had attained,
at least for the next hour, a vigour that demanded only the physical
capacity of endurance; an eagerness worthy of such great occasions
found a marching vigour for its servant.
In Ronciglione I saw the things that Turner drew; I mean the rocks
from which a river springs, and houses all massed together, giving the
steep a kind of crown. This also accompanied that picture, the soft
light which mourns the sun and lends half-colours to the world. It was
cool, and the opportunity beckoned. I ate and drank, asking every one
questions of Rome, and I passed under their great gate and pursued the
road to the plain. In the mist, as it rose, there rose also a passion
to achieve.
All the night long, mile after mile, I hurried along the Cassian Way.
For five days I had slept through the heat, and the southern night had
become my daytime; and though the mist was dense, and though the moon,
now past her quarter, only made a vague place in heaven, yet
expectation and fancy took more than the place of sight. In this fog I
felt with every step of the night march the approach to the goal.
Long past the place I had marked as a halt, long past Sette Vene, a
light blurred upon the white wreaths of vapour; distant songs and the
noise of men feasting ended what had been for many, many hours--for
more than twenty miles of pressing forward--an exaltation worthy of
the influence that bred it. Then came on me again, after the full
march, a necessity for food and for repose. But these things, which
have been the matter of so much in this book, now seemed subservient
only to the reaching of an end; they were left aside in the mind.
It was an inn with trellis outside making an arbour. In the yard
before it many peasants sat at table; their beasts and waggons stood
in the roadway, though, at this late hour, men were feeding some and
housing others. Within, fifty men or more were making a meal or a
carousal.
What feast or what necessity of travel made them keep the night alive
I neither knew nor asked; but passing almost unobserved amongst them
between the long tables, I took my place at the end, and the master
served me with good food and wine. As I ate the clamour of the
peasants sounded about me, and I mixed with the energy of numbers.
With a little difficulty I made the master understand that I wished to
sleep till dawn. He led me out to a small granary (for the house was
full), and showed me where I should sleep in the scented hay. He would
take no money for such a lodging, and left me after showing me how the
door latched and unfastened; and out of so many men, he was the last
man whom I thanked for a service until I passed the gates of Rome.
Above the soft bed which the hay made, a square window, unglazed, gave
upon the southern night; the mist hardly drifted in or past it, so
still was the air. I watched it for a while drowsily; then sleep again
fell on me.
But as I slept, Rome, Rome still beckoned me, and I woke in a
struggling light as though at a voice calling, and slipping out I
could not but go on to the end.
The small square paving of the Via Cassia, all even like a palace
floor, rang under my steps. The parched banks and strips of dry fields
showed through the fog (for its dampness did not cure the arid soil of
the Campagna). The sun rose and the vapour lifted. Then, indeed, I
peered through the thick air--but still I could see nothing of my
goal, only confused folds of brown earth and burnt-up grasses, and
farther off rare and un-northern trees.
I passed an old tower of the Middle Ages that was eaten away at its
base by time or the quarrying of men; I passed a divergent way on the
right where a wooden sign said 'The Triumphal Way', and I wondered
whether it could be the road where ritual had once ordained that
triumphs should go. It seemed lonely and lost, and divorced from any
approach to sacred hills.
The road fell into a hollow where soldiers were manoeuvring. Even
these could not arrest an attention that was fixed upon the
approaching revelation. The road climbed a little slope where a branch
went off to the left, and where there was a house and an arbour under
vines. It was now warm day; trees of great height stood shading the
sun; the place had taken on an appearance of wealth and care. The mist
had gone before I reached the summit of the rise.
There, from the summit, between the high villa walls on either
side--at my very feet I saw the City.
And now all you people whatsoever that are presently reading, may have
read, or shall in the future read, this my many-sided but now-ending
book; all you also that in the mysterious designs of Providence may
not be fated to read it for some very long time to come; you then I
say, entire, englobed, and universal race of men both in gross and
regardant, not only living and seeing the sunlight, but dead also
under the earth; shades, or to come in procession afterwards out of
the dark places into the day for a little, swarms of you, an army
without end; all you black and white, red, yellow and brown, men,
women, children and poets--all of you, wherever you are now, or have
been, or shall be in your myriads and deka myriads and hendeka
myriads, the time has come when I must bid you farewell--
_Ludisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti;
Tempus abire tibi est...._
Only Lector I keep by me for a very little while longer with a special
purpose, but even he must soon leave me; for all good things come to
an end, and this book is coming to an end--has come to an end. The
leaves fall, and they are renewed; the sun sets on the Vexin hills,
but he rises again over the woods of Marly. Human companionship once
broken can never be restored, and you and I shall not meet or
understand each other again. It is so of all the poor links whereby we
try to bridge the impassable gulf between soul and soul. Oh! we spin
something, I know, but it is very gossamer, thin and strained, and
even if it does not snap time will at last dissolve it.