But How People Sleep And Wake,
If You Do Not Yet Know It After So Much Of This Book You Never Will.
It was perhaps five o'clock, or rather more, when I rose unhappily and
took up the ceaseless road.
Even the goodness of the Italian nature seemed parched up in those dry
hollows. At an inn where I ate they shouted at me, thinking in that
way to make me understand; and their voices were as harsh as the
grating of metal against stone. A mile farther I crossed a lonely line
of railway; then my map told me where I was, and I went wearily up an
indefinite slope under the declining sun, and thought it outrageous
that only when the light had gone was there any tolerable air in this
country.
Soon the walls of San Quirico, partly ruinous, stood above the fields
(for the smallest places here have walls); as I entered its gate the
sun set, and as though the cool, coming suddenly, had a magic in it,
everything turned kinder. A church that could wake interest stood at
the entry of the town; it had stone lions on its steps, and the
pillars were so carved as to resemble knotted ropes. There for the
first time I saw in procession one of those confraternities which in
Italy bury the dead; they had long and dreadful hoods over their
heads, with slits for the eyes. I spoke to the people of San Quirico,
and they to me.
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