We said, during summer days at Venice, when every _campo_ was a
furnace seven times heated, and every canal was filled with boiling
bathers, "As soon as it rains we will go to Arquà." Remembering the
ardors of an April sun on the long, level roads of plain, we could not
think of them in August without a sense of dust clogging every pore,
and eyes that shrank from the vision of their blinding whiteness. So
we stayed in Venice, waiting for rain, until the summer had almost
lapsed into autumn; and as the weather cooled before any rain reached
us, we took the moisture on the main-land for granted, and set out
under a cloudy and windy sky.
We had to go to Padua by railway, and take carriage thence to Arquà
upon the road to Ferrara. I believe no rule of human experience was
violated when it began to rain directly after we reached Padua,
and continued to rain violently the whole day. We gave up this day
entirely to the rain, and did not leave Padua until the following
morning when we count that our pilgrimage to Petrarch's house actually
began.
The rain had cooled and freshened the air, but it was already too
late in the season for the summer to recover herself with the elastic
brilliancy that follows the rain of July or early August; and there
was I know not what vague sentiment of autumn in the weather. There
was not yet enough of it to stir the
"Tears from the depth of some divine despair;"
but in here and there a faded leaf (for in Europe death is not
glorified to the foliage as in our own land), in the purple of the
ripening grapes, and in the tawny grass of the pastures, there was
autumn enough to touch our spirits, and while it hardly affected the
tone of the landscape, to lay upon us the gentle and pensive spell of
its presence. Of all the days in the year I would have chosen this to
go pilgrim to the house of Petrarch.
The Euganean Hills, on one of which the poet's house is built, are
those mellow heights which you see when you look southwest across the
lagoon at Venice. In misty weather they are blue, and in clear weather
silver, and the October sunset loves them. They rise in tender azure
before you as you issue from the southern gate of Padua, and grow in
loveliness as you draw nearer to them from the rich plain that washes
their feet with endless harvests of oil and wine.
Oh beauty that will not let itself be told! Could I not take warning
from another, and refrain from this fruitless effort of description? A
friend in Padua had lent me Disraeli's "Venetia," because a passage
of the story occurs in Petrarch's house at Arquà, and we carried the
volumes with us on our pilgrimage. I would here quote the description
of the village, the house, and the hills from this work, as
faultlessly true, and as affording no just idea of either; but nothing
of it has remained in my mind except the geological fact that the
hills are a volcanic range. To tell the truth, the landscape, as we
rode along, continually took my mind off the book, and I could
not give that attention either to the elegant language of its
descriptions, or the adventures of its well-born characters, which
they deserved. I was even more interested in the disreputable-looking
person who mounted the box beside our driver directly we got out of
the city gate, and who invariably commits this infringement upon your
rights in Italy, no matter how strictly and cunningly you frame your
contract that no one else is to occupy any part of the carriage but
yourself. He does not seem to be the acquaintance of the driver, for
they never exchange a word, and he does not seem to pay any thing for
the ride. He got down, in this instance, just before we reached the
little town at which our driver stopped, and asked us if we wished
to drink a glass of the wine of the country. We did not, but his own
thirst seemed to answer equally well, and he slaked it cheerfully at
our cost.
The fields did not present the busy appearance which had delighted
us on the same road in the spring, but they had that autumnal charm
already mentioned. Many of the vine-leaves were sear; the red grapes
were already purple, and the white grapes pearly ripe, and they formed
a gorgeous necklace for the trees, around which they clung in opulent
festoons. Then, dearer to our American hearts than this southern
splendor, were the russet fields of Indian corn, and, scattered among
the shrunken stalks, great nuggets of the "harmless gold" of pumpkins.
At Battaglia (the village just beyond which you turn off to go to
Arquà) there was a fair, on the blessed occasion of some saint's day,
and there were many booths full of fruits, agricultural implements,
toys, clothes, wooden ware, and the like. There was a great crowd
and a noise, but, according to the mysterious Italian custom, nobody
seemed to be buying or selling. I am in the belief that a small
purchase of grapes we made here on our return was the great
transaction of the day, unless, indeed, the neat operation in alms
achieved at our expense by a mendicant villager may be classed
commercially.
When we turned off from the Rovigo road at Battaglia we were only
three miles from Arquà.