_'Pater, habeo linguam latinam, sed non habeo linguam Italicam. Visne
mi dare traductionem in istam linguam Toscanam non nullorum
verborum?'_
To this he replied, _'Libenter,'_ and the people revered us both. Thus
he told me the name for a knife was _cultello;_ for a room, _camera
par domire;_ for 'what is it called?' _'come si chiama?';_ for 'what
is the road to?' _'quella e la via a ...?'_ and other phrases wherein,
no doubt, I am wrong; but I only learnt by ear.
Then he said to me something I did not understand, and I answered,
_'Pol-Hercle!'_ at which he seemed pleased enough.
Then, to make conversation, I said, _'Diaconus es?'_
And he answered me, mildly and gravely, _'Presbyter sum.'_
And a little while after he left for his house, but I went out on to
the balcony, where men and women were talking in subdued tones. There,
alone, I sat and watched the night coming up into these Tuscan hills.
The first moon since that waning in Lorraine - (how many nights ago,
how many marches!) - hung in the sky, a full crescent, growing into
brightness and glory as she assumed her reign. The one star of the
west called out his silent companions in their order; the mountains
merged into a fainter confusion; heaven and the infinite air became
the natural seat of any spirit that watched this spell. The fire-flies
darted in the depths of vineyards and of trees below; then the noise
of the grasshoppers brought back suddenly the gardens of home, and
whatever benediction surrounds our childhood. Some promise of eternal
pleasures and of rest deserved haunted the village of Sillano.
In very early youth the soul can still remember its immortal
habitation, and clouds and the edges of hills are of another kind from
ours, and every scent and colour has a savour of Paradise. What that
quality may be no language can tell, nor have men made any words, no,
nor any music, to recall it - only in a transient way and elusive the
recollection of what youth was, and purity, flashes on us in phrases
of the poets, and is gone before we can fix it in our minds - oh! my
friends, if we could but recall it! Whatever those sounds may be that
are beyond our sounds, and whatever are those keen lives which remain
alive there under memory - whatever is Youth - Youth came up that valley
at evening, borne upon a southern air. If we deserve or attain
beatitude, such things shall at last be our settled state; and their
now sudden influence upon the soul in short ecstasies is the proof
that they stand outside time, and are not subject to decay.
This, then, was the blessing of Sillano, and here was perhaps the
highest moment of those seven hundred miles - or more.
