Me
back again on the straight line to Rome, and I foolishly thought it
might be possible to hear there of some straight path down the Lambro
(for that river still possessed me somewhat).
Therefore, after hours and hours of trudging miserably along the wide
highway in the wretched and searching rain, after splashing through
tortuous Melegnano, and not even stopping to wonder if it was the
place of the battle, after noting in despair the impossible Lambro, I
came, caring for nothing, to the place where a secondary road branches
off to the right over a level crossing and makes for Lodi Vecchio.
It was not nearly midday, but I had walked perhaps fifteen miles, and
had only rested once in a miserable Trattoria. In less than three
miles I came to that unkempt and lengthy village, founded upon dirt
and living in misery, and through the quiet, cold, persistent rain I
splashed up the main street. I passed wretched, shivering dogs and
mournful fowls that took a poor refuge against walls; passed a sad
horse that hung its head in the wet and stood waiting for a master,
till at last I reached the open square where the church stood, then I
knew that I had seen all Old Lodi had to offer me. So, going into an
eating-house, or inn, opposite the church, I found a girl and her
mother serving, and I saluted them, but there was no fire, and my
heart sank to the level of that room, which was, I am sure, no more
than fifty-four degrees.
Why should the less gracious part of a pilgrimage be specially
remembered? In life were remember joy best - that is what makes us sad
by contrast; pain somewhat, especially if it is acute; but dulness
never. And a book - which has it in its own power to choose and to
emphasize - has no business to record dulness. What did I at Lodi
Vecchio? I ate; I dried my clothes before a tepid stove in a kitchen.
I tried to make myself understood by the girl and her mother. I sat at
a window and drew the ugly church on principle. Oh, the vile sketch!
Worthy of that Lombard plain, which they had told me was so full of
wonderful things. I gave up all hope of by-roads, and I determined to
push back obliquely to the highway again - obliquely in order to save
time! Nepios!
These 'by-roads' of the map turned out in real life to be all manner
of abominable tracks. Some few were metalled, some were cart-ruts
merely, some were open lanes of rank grass; and along most there went
a horrible ditch, and in many fields the standing water proclaimed
desolation. IN so far as I can be said to have had a way at all, I
lost it.
