But this hour you will not receive in
the rain on the Emilian Way.
Here then, next day, just outside a town called Borgo, past the middle
of morning, the rain ceased.
Its effect was still upon the slippery and shining road, the sky was
still fast and leaden, when, in a distaste for their towns, I skirted
the place by a lane that runs westward of the houses, and sitting upon
a low wall, I looked up at the Apennines, which were now plain above
me, and thought over my approaching passage through those hills.
But here I must make clear by a map the mass of mountains which I was
about to attempt, and in which I forded so many rivers, met so many
strange men and beasts, saw such unaccountable sights, was imprisoned,
starved, frozen, haunted, delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed
in Tuscany - in a word, where I had the most extraordinary and
unheard-of adventures that ever diversified the life of man.
The straight line to Rome runs from Milan not quite through Piacenza,
but within a mile or two of that city.
