The third,
fourth, fifth, and sixth branches were easily fordable. The seventh
was broad and deep, and I found it a heavy matter; nor should I have
waded it but for my guide, for the water bore against me like a man
wrestling, and it was as cold as Acheron, the river of the dead. Then
on the further shore, and warning him (in Lingua Franca) of his peril,
I gave him his wage, and he smiled and thanked me, and went back,
choosing his plans at leisure.
Thus did I cross the river Taro; a danger for men.
Where I landed was a poor man sunning himself. He rose and walked with
me to Fornovo. He knew the guide.
'He is a good man,' he said to me of this friend. 'He is as good as a
little piece of bread.'
'E vero,' I answered; 'e San Cristophero.'
This pleased the peasant; and indeed it was true. For the guide's
business was exactly that of St Christopher, except that the Saint
took no money, and lived, I suppose, on air.
And so to Fornovo; and the heat blinded and confused, and the air was
alive with flies. But the sun dried me at once, and I pressed up the
road because I needed food. After I had eaten in this old town I was
preparing to make for Calestano and to cross the first high spur of
the Apennines that separated me from it, when I saw, as I left the
place, a very old church; and I stayed a moment and looked at carvings
which were in no order, but put in pell-mell, evidently chosen from
some older building. They were barbaric, but one could see that they
stood for the last judgement of man, and there were the good looking
foolish, and there were the wicked being boiled by devils in a pot,
and what was most pleasing was one devil who with great joy was
carrying off a rich man's gold in a bag. But now we are too wise to
believe in such follies, and when we die we take our wealth with us;
in the ninth century they had no way of doing this, for no system of
credit yet obtained.
Then leaving the main road which runs to Pontremoli and at last to
Spezzia, my lane climbed up into the hills and ceased, little by
little, to be even a lane. It became from time to time the bed of a
stream, then nothing, then a lane again, and at last, at the head of
the glen, I confessed to having lost it; but I noted a great rock or
peak above me for a landmark, and I said to myself -
'No matter. The wall of this glen before me is obviously the ridge of
the spur; the rock must be left to the north, and I have but to cross
the ridge by its guidance.' By this time, however, the heat overcame
me, and, as it was already afternoon, and as I had used so much of the
preceding night for my journey, I remembered the wise custom of hot
countries and lay down to sleep.
