In the mist, as it rose, there rose also a passion
to achieve.
All the night long, mile after mile, I hurried along the Cassian Way.
For five days I had slept through the heat, and the southern night had
become my daytime; and though the mist was dense, and though the moon,
now past her quarter, only made a vague place in heaven, yet
expectation and fancy took more than the place of sight. In this fog I
felt with every step of the night march the approach to the goal.
Long past the place I had marked as a halt, long past Sette Vene, a
light blurred upon the white wreaths of vapour; distant songs and the
noise of men feasting ended what had been for many, many hours - for
more than twenty miles of pressing forward - an exaltation worthy of
the influence that bred it. Then came on me again, after the full
march, a necessity for food and for repose. But these things, which
have been the matter of so much in this book, now seemed subservient
only to the reaching of an end; they were left aside in the mind.
It was an inn with trellis outside making an arbour. In the yard
before it many peasants sat at table; their beasts and waggons stood
in the roadway, though, at this late hour, men were feeding some and
housing others. Within, fifty men or more were making a meal or a
carousal.
What feast or what necessity of travel made them keep the night alive
I neither knew nor asked; but passing almost unobserved amongst them
between the long tables, I took my place at the end, and the master
served me with good food and wine. As I ate the clamour of the
peasants sounded about me, and I mixed with the energy of numbers.
With a little difficulty I made the master understand that I wished to
sleep till dawn. He led me out to a small granary (for the house was
full), and showed me where I should sleep in the scented hay. He would
take no money for such a lodging, and left me after showing me how the
door latched and unfastened; and out of so many men, he was the last
man whom I thanked for a service until I passed the gates of Rome.
Above the soft bed which the hay made, a square window, unglazed, gave
upon the southern night; the mist hardly drifted in or past it, so
still was the air. I watched it for a while drowsily; then sleep again
fell on me.
But as I slept, Rome, Rome still beckoned me, and I woke in a
struggling light as though at a voice calling, and slipping out I
could not but go on to the end.
