I hesitated with reverence before
touching the sacred soil which I had taken so long to reach, and I
longed to be able to drink its health; but though I had gone, I
suppose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing, I would not
stop; for I remembered the two francs, and my former certitude of
reaching Milan was shaking and crumbling. The great heat of midday
would soon be on me, I had yet nearly thirty miles to go, and my bad
night began to oppress me.
I crossed the frontier, which is here an imaginary line. Two slovenly
customs-house men asked me if I had anything dutiable on me. I said
No, and it was evident enough, for in my little sack or pocket was
nothing but a piece of bread. If they had applied the American test,
and searched me for money, then indeed they could have turned me back,
and I should have been forced to go into the fields a quarter of a
mile or so and come into their country by a path instead of a
highroad.
This necessity was spared me. I climbed slowly up the long slope that
hides Como, then I came down upon that lovely city and saw its frame
of hills and its lake below me.
These things are not like things seen by the eyes.
