I Sat On The Bank And Gazed At The Lake In Some Despair.
Certainly I
could not sleep again without a covering cloth, and it was now past
midnight, nor did I know of any house, whether if I took the road I
should find one in a mile, or in two, or in five.
And, note you, I was
utterly exhausted. That enormous march from Faido, though it had been
wisely broken by the siesta at Bellinzona, needed more than a few cold
hours under trees, and I thought of the three poor francs in my
pocket, and of the thirty-eight miles remaining to Milan.
The stars were beyond the middle of their slow turning, and I watched
them, splendid and in order, for sympathy, as I also regularly, but
slowly and painfully, dragged myself along my appointed road. But in a
very short time a great, tall, square, white house stood right on the
roadway, and to my intense joy I saw a light in one of its higher
windows. Standing therefore beneath, I cried at the top of my voice,
'Hola!' five or six times. A woman put her head out of the window into
the fresh night, and said, 'You cannot sleep here; we have no rooms,'
then she remained looking out of her window and ready to analyse the
difficulties of the moment; a good-natured woman and fat.
In a moment another window at the same level, but farther from me,
opened, and a man leaned out, just as those alternate figures come in
and out of the toys that tell the weather.
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