Elizabeth Robins Pennell

“ We looked over the broad valley, where the vines were festooned, not as Virgil saw them, from elm to elm, but from mulberry to mulberry, and up to San Gimignano, beginning to take more definite shape on its mountain-top. A peasant in peaked hat and blue shirt, with trousers rolled up high above his bare knees, crossed the road and silently examined the tricycle. "You have a good horse," he then said; "it eats nothing." We asked him if they were at work in his vineyard. No, he answered; but would we like to look in the wine-press opposite? ”

“ It was pleasant wandering through the town, with the grave young man as guide, to the Palazzo Communale, where the red and white flag of the Duke of Cornia waving outside was the same as that painted in the old frescos within, and where councilmen holding council bowed to us as we passed; and then to the old deserted castle which, with its gray battlemented walls and towers, was not unlike an English ruin. But it was pleasanter when, Sandrino having kissed his friend, we were on the road again, riding between yellow mulberries by the side of the lake. ”

“ The seven miles' coast to which we had looked forward for days, was to be a walk after all. Like the King of France and his twenty thousand men, we had marched up the mountain that we might march down again. Is it any wonder that we both lost our tempers, and that an accident was the smallest evil we wished the manufacturers of our tricycle? Because they cared more for lightness than for strength,—since record-making is as yet the chief end of the cycling,—the necks of people who ride for pleasure are forsooth to be risked with impunity! ”

“ Shining silver cobwebs hung on the hedges. Before many minutes, so fast did we go, we were riding right into the mist. We could see but a few feet in front of us, and the olives on either side, through the heavy white veil, looked like spectres. We passed no one but a man carrying a lantern and a cage of owls. It seemed but natural that so uncanny a ride should lead to a home of shadows. And when we came to the tomb of the Volumnii at the foot of the mountain we left the tricycle without, and went down for a while into its darkness and damp. ”

“ About five miles from the city the desolation was somewhat relieved, for there were hedges by the roadside, and beyond sloping olive-gardens and vineyards. Poplars grew by little streams and sometimes we rode under oaks. On the top of every gray hill, giving it color, was a farm-house, rows of brilliant pumpkins laid on its red walls, ears of yellow corn hung in its loggia, and gigantic haystacks standing close by. There were monasteries too, great square brick buildings with tall towers, and below spire-like cypresses. ”

“ One wonders if this could have been the same Sodoma who painted the Saint Sebastian in Florence, and yet there is more charm in his pictures than in those of Signorelli. But what we cared for most were his portraits of himself, with heavy hair hanging about his face, and wearing the cloak the Milanese gentleman, turned monk, had given him, and of his wife and child; and the pictures of the raven and the other pets he brought with him to the monastery, to the wonder of the good monks. It is a pity every one cannot look at these frescos with such loving, reverential eyes as the Abate. ”

“ There were down as well as up grades, and for every steep climb we had a short coast. Now we came out on villas which but a little before had been above us, and now we reached the very summit of hills from which we looked forth upon mountain rising beyond mountain,—some treeless and ashen gray, others thickly wooded and glowing with golden greens and russets, and still others white and mist-like, and seeming to melt into the soft white clouds resting on their highest peaks. All along, the hedges were covered with clusters of red rose-berries and the orange berries of the pyracanthus. ”

“ VIRGIL'S COUNTRY.
"If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey's end!" The next morning, with a select company of ragged boys, our young guide arrived in time to see us start. When I came out he nodded in a friendly way, as if to an old acquaintance, to the wonder and admiration of the other youngsters. The waiter, his glasses on, came to the gate with us. Two monks standing there asked how far we were going on our velocipede. "To Rome?" they cried. "Why, then, here are two pilgrims and two priests!" ”

“ But who ever knew the hour when the people of an Italian town were not up and abroad? No sooner did J. bring the tricycle from the stable, where it had been kept all night, to the Albergo, than the piazza was again crowded. On they all came with us, men, women, and children, hooting and shouting, jumping and dancing through the vilely paved streets, and finally sprawling over the walls and on the rocks beyond the gate. ”

“ We left the town by the frescoed gateway, through which we saw the near hills, gray, bare, and furrowed, the long lines of cypresses, the stretches of gray [pg 31] olives, the valley below with its vineyards, and the far mountains, purple and shadowy, the highest topped with many-towered San Gimignano.
It is better not to be jocund with the fruitful grape in the middle of the day when one is tricycling. The cognac we had taken at lunch, weak as it was, and the vermouth made us sleepy and our feet heavy. I sympathized with the men who lay in sound slumbers in every cart we met. ”

“ To one side was the gray mountain, to the other dense cypresses, and above a blue, cloudless [pg 86] sky. The roses were still in bloom, and as we lingered there, the Abate went from bush to bush and picked for me a large bunch of fragrant buds. I hope if the monks ever do come back that, while they throw open the windows of the pharmacy and let the light in again upon the majolica and the dark woodwork, they will leave the gates of the garden locked. It is fairer in its confusion than it ever could be with weeded paths and well-clipped bushes. ”

“ Near the town we met two young lovers, their arms around each other's waists, and a group of men who directed us in our search for the inn up a short steep hill leading away from the main road. Above, inside the city gate, several other citizens told us we must go down again, for the road we had left led right by the door. Clearly the Albergo della Stella—for that was its name—was not well known in Cortona. After a climb of three miles it was provoking to go even a foot out of our way, and we turned back in no cheerful mood. ”

“ Of the ride from Certaldo to Poggibonsi, I remember best the loud inarticulate cries of J. and his calls of "Eccomi!" as if he were lord of the land, to sleeping drivers. The Italian cry of the roads, rising to a high note and then suddenly falling and ending in a low prolonged one, which is indispensable to travellers, is not easy to learn. J.'s proficiency in it, however, made him pass for a native when he limited himself to howling. But often donkeys darted into ditches and oxen plunged across the road before the peasants behind them awoke. Like Sancho Panza they had a talent for sleeping. ”

“ Women plaiting straw, great yellow bunches of which hung at their waists, and children greeted us with shouts. Shirtless bakers, their hands white with flour, and barbers holding their razors, men with faces half shaved and still lathered, and others with wine-glasses to their lips, rushed to look at this new folly of the foreigner,—for ours was the first tandem tricycle ever seen in Italy. ”

“ The Abate took us everywhere,—through the empty guest-chambers of the palace to the tower, now a home for pigeons, from the top of which one has a wide view of the country, which with its squares of olives and its gray hills and fields marked by deep furrows, as if by boundary lines, looks like a large map or geological chart,—through the monastery, with its three hundred rooms with now but three monks to occupy them ”

“ We were glad to see Cività Castellana. One or two men in answer to our questions had told us we were close to it, but we did not believe them. The fields seemed to stretch for miles before us, and there was not a house or tower in sight. But suddenly the road turned and went down-hill, and there below was the city perched on tufa cliffs, a deep ravine surrounding it. Two carabinieri, in cocked hats and folded cloaks like the famous two solitary horsemen, were setting out on their night patrol. ”

“ There was a great festa that day, and all along the street and out on the country road we met men and women in holiday dress carrying baskets and bunches and wreaths of pink chrysanthemums. In Narni, on the heights which Martial called inaccessible, men were lounging in the piazza or playing cards in the caffè. For the shepherds alone there was no rest from every-day work. Before we reached even Narni, but ten miles across the valley from Terni, we saw several driving their sheep and goats into the broad meadows. ”

“ Far below in a narrow valley ran the little river Nar, and on the bank above it the railroad. It was not an easy road to travel, and often the hills were too steep to coast or to climb. The few farm-houses by the way were closed, for the peasants had gone to church. We saw an occasional little gray town crowning the top of sheer gray cliffs, like those in Albert Dürer's pictures, or an old castle either deserted or else with farm-house built in its ruins, where peasants leaned over the battlemented walls. ”

“ But after the bridge we left the river, for we were bound for Assisi. We had a quiet, peaceful ride for several miles on the Umbrian plain, where in the old times no one dared to go without the permission of the Baglioni, between vineyards and fields where men were ploughing, and through insignificant little villages, until we came out upon the large piazza in front of Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was crowded with peasants, for market was just over, and there came from every side the sound of many voices. ”

“ But on we went without resting, J. pushing the machine and I walking behind, womanlike shirking my share of the work. The road grew worse until it became nothing but a mass of ruts and gullies washed out by the rain, and led to a hill from which even Christian would have turned and fled. But we struggled up, reaching the top to see the gate of the monastery some sixty or seventy feet below. Finally we came to the great brick gateway which in the dull light—for by this time the color had faded from the sky—rose before us a heavy black pile, beyond whose archway we saw only shadow and mystery. ”

“ The roads [pg 67] were sticky and the machine ran heavily, and trees and hedges were wet with sparkling raindrops. There is an imposing entrance to the little town, a pointed bridge over a narrow stream, with a Madonna and Child in marble relief at the highest point, an avenue of tall poplars with marble benches set between, and then the heavy brick walls blackened with age, and the gateway, its high Gothic arch decorated with the old Sienese wolf and a more recent crop of weeds.
We rode from one end to the other,—a two minutes' ride,—without finding a trattoria. ”

“ It was the same in the afternoon, when the Abate had gone about his work,—for he is a busy man, like the centurion with many under him,—and J. and I wandered alone over the gray hills up to Chiusure. Life with its hardships must be real enough to the people of this little village, in which seeds of pestilence sown hundreds of years ago still bear the bitter fruit of wretchedness. It seems as if the brick walls which could not keep out the plague have ever since successfully barred the way to all prosperity, for generation after generation is born within them but to live and die in poverty. ”

“ Later from the high terrace of the park opposite San Pietro we saw the boys in their blue blouses digging and hoeing in the fields under the olives, where probably the monks themselves once worked. There is in this little park an amphitheatre with archway, bearing the Perugian griffin in the centre. It is shaded by dense ilex-trees, from whose branches a raven must once have croaked; for evil has come upon the place, as it has upon the gray monastery so near. ”

“ We were prepossessed against San Quirico before we reached it. Olives with vines hanging from them in defiance of Virgil, brown fields, and red and yellow trees, could not reconcile us to the long climb up the mountain. It was worth our trouble, however, if only to see the cathedral. We left the tricycle at the trattoria, and at our leisure looked at the portal and its pillars, with quaintly carved [pg 98] capitals of animals and birds, and at those others, joined together with a Celtic-like twist and resting on leopards, and then at the two sea-monsters above. ”

“ Near Montepulciano we came to a thickly wooded country, riding for several miles between chestnuts and oaks. There were open places, too, from which we saw far below the fair Val di Chiana, and in the distance Lake Thrasymene, pale and silvery, and close by olive-gardens, through whose gray branches we looked at the purple mountains and their snowy summits. ”

“ I know nothing that interferes so seriously with hero-worship as hunger. I confess that if some one had said, "You can go either to see Boccaccio's house or to lunch at a trattoria, but both these things you cannot do," our answer would have been an immediate order for lunch. We went at once to a trattoria on the piazza where Boccaccio's statue stands. I doubt if that great man himself ever gathered such numbers about him as we did. Excited citizens, when the tricycle was put away, stood on the threshold and stared at us until the door was shut upon them. ”