But it was an
oven. So imagine me, after having passed chapels built into rocks, and
things most curious, but the whole under the strain of an intolerable
sun, coming, something after midday, to a place called Castel-Nuovo,
the first town, for Campogiamo is hardly a town.
At Castel-Nuovo I sat upon a bridge and thought, not what good men
think (there came into my memory no historical stuff; for all I know,
Liberty never went by that valley in arms); no appreciation of beauty
filled me; I was indifferent to all save the intolerable heat, when I
suddenly recognized the enormous number of bridges that bespattered
the town.
'This is an odd thing,' I mused. 'Here is a little worriment of a town
up in the hills, and what a powerful lot of bridges!'
I cared not a fig for the thousand things I had been told to expect in
Tuscany; everything is in a mind, and as they were not in my mind they
did not exist. But the bridges, they indeed were worthy of admiration!
Here was a horrible little place on a torrent bank. One bridge was
reasonable for by it went the road leading south to Lucca and to Rome;
it was common honour to let men escape.
