Then Nearer By, One Saw That It Was Not A Huge Castle, But
The Wall Of A City, For At A Corner It Went Sharp Round To Contain The
Town, And Through One Uneven Place I Saw Houses.
Many men were walking
in the roads alongside these walls, and there were gates pierced in
them whereby the citizens went in and out of the city as bees go in
and out of the little opening in a hive.
But my main road to Rome did not go through Viterbo, it ran alongside
of the eastern wall, and I debated a little with myself whether I
would go in or no. It was out of my way, and I had not entered
Montefiascone for that reason. On the other hand, Viterbo was a famous
place. It is all very well to neglect Florence and Pisa because they
are some miles off the straight way, but Viterbo right under one's
hand it is a pity to miss. Then I needed wine and food for the later
day in the mountain. Yet, again, it was getting hot. It was past
eight, the mist had long ago receded, and I feared delay. So I mused
on the white road under the tall towers and dead walls of Viterbo, and
ruminated on an unimportant thing. Then curiosity did what reason
could not do, and I entered by a gate.
The streets were narrow, tortuous, and alive, all shaded by the great
houses, and still full of the cold of the night. The noise of
fountains echoed in them, and the high voices of women and the cries
of sellers. Every house had in it something fantastic and peculiar;
humanity had twined into this place like a natural growth, and the
separate thoughts of men, both those that were alive there and those
dead before them, had decorated it all. There were courtyards with
blinding whites of sunlit walls above, themselves in shadow; and there
were many carvings and paintings over doors. I had come into a great
living place after the loneliness of the road.
There, in the first wide street I could find, I bought sausage and
bread and a great bottle of wine, and then quitting Viterbo, I left it
by the same gate and took the road.
For a long while yet I continued under the walls, noting in one place
a thing peculiar to the Middle Ages, I mean the apse of a church built
right into the wall as the old Cathedral of St Stephen's was in Paris.
These, I suppose, enemies respected if they could; for I have noticed
also that in castles the chapel is not hidden, but stands out from the
wall. So be it. Your fathers and mine were there in the fighting, but
we do not know their names, and I trust and hope yours spared the
altars as carefully as mine did.
The road began to climb the hill, and though the heat increased - for
in Italy long before nine it is glaring noon to us northerners (and
that reminds me:
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