Is a
healthy omission), if (I say) I did this, I did what peasants do. And
what is more, by drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves no
Mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of, St Peter looks with a
kindly eye.
Now, just at the very entry to Bolsena, when we had followed the
lovely lake some time, my driver halted and began to turn up a lane to
a farm or villa; so I, bidding him good-night, crossed a field and
stood silent by the lake and watched for a long time the water
breaking on a tiny shore, and the pretty miniatures of waves. I stood
there till the stars came out and the moon shone fully; then I went
towards Bolsena under its high gate which showed in the darkness, and
under its castle on the rock. There, in a large room which was not
quite an inn, a woman of great age and dignity served me with fried
fish from the lake, and the men gathered round me and attempted to
tell me of the road to Rome, while I in exchange made out to them as
much by gestures as by broken words the crossing of the Alps and the
Apennines.
Then, after my meal, one of the men told me I needed sleep; that there
were no rooms in that house (as I said, it was not an inn), but that
across the way he would show me one he had for hire. I tried to say
that my plan was to walk by night. They all assured me he would charge
me a reasonable sum. I insisted that the day was too hot for walking.
They told me, did these Etruscans, that I need fear no extortion from
so honest a man.
Certainly it is not easy to make everybody understand everything, and
I had had experience already up in the mountains, days before, of how
important it is not to be misunderstood when one is wandering in a
foreign country, poor and ill-clad. I therefore accepted the offer,
and, what was really very much to my regret, I paid the money he
demanded. I even so far fell in with the spirit of the thing as to
sleep a certain number of hours (for after all, my sleep that day in
the cart had been very broken, and instead of resting throughout the
whole of the heat I had taken a meal at Acquapendente). But I woke up
not long after midnight - perhaps between one and two o'clock - and went
out along the borders of the lake.
The moon had set; I wish I could have seen her hanging at the quarter
in the clear sky of that high crater, dipping into the rim of its
inland sea.
