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.
