Never since the early liars first cooked eggs in the sand was there
such heat, and it was made hotter by the consciousness of folly, than
which there is no more heating thing; for I think that not old
Championnet himself, with his Division of Iron, that fought one to
three and crushed the aged enormities of the oppressors as we would
crush an empty egg, and that found the summer a good time for fighting
in Naples, I say that he himself would not have marched men up the
Garfagnana in such a sun. Folly planned it, Pride held to it, and the
devils lent their climate. Garfagnana! Garfagnana! to have such a
pleasant name, and to be what you are!
Not that there were not old towers on the steep woods of the Apennine,
nor glimpses of the higher peaks; towns also: one castle surrounded by
a fringe of humble roofs - there were all these things. But it was an
oven. So imagine me, after having passed chapels built into rocks, and
things most curious, but the whole under the strain of an intolerable
sun, coming, something after midday, to a place called Castel-Nuovo,
the first town, for Campogiamo is hardly a town.
At Castel-Nuovo I sat upon a bridge and thought, not what good men
think (there came into my memory no historical stuff; for all I know,
Liberty never went by that valley in arms); no appreciation of beauty
filled me; I was indifferent to all save the intolerable heat, when I
suddenly recognized the enormous number of bridges that bespattered
the town.
'This is an odd thing,' I mused. 'Here is a little worriment of a town
up in the hills, and what a powerful lot of bridges!'
I cared not a fig for the thousand things I had been told to expect in
Tuscany; everything is in a mind, and as they were not in my mind they
did not exist. But the bridges, they indeed were worthy of admiration!
Here was a horrible little place on a torrent bank. One bridge was
reasonable for by it went the road leading south to Lucca and to Rome;
it was common honour to let men escape. But as I sat on that main
bridge I counted seven others; indeed there must have been a worship
of a bridge-god some time or other to account for such a necklace of
bridges in such a neglected borough.
You may say (I am off hard on the road to Borgo, drooping with the
heat, but still going strongly), you may say that is explicable
enough. First a thing is useful, you say, then it has to become
routine; then the habit, being a habit, gets a sacred idea attached to
it.
