For With The
First Slopes Of The Mountain A Forest Of Great Chestnut Trees
Appeared, And It Was So Cool
Under these that there was even moss, as
though I were back again in my own country where there are
Full rivers
in summer-time, deep meadows, and all the completion of home.
Also the height may have begun to tell on the air, but not much, for
when the forest was behind me, and when I had come to a bare heath
sloping more gently upwards - a glacis in front of the topmost bulwark
of the round mountain - - I was oppressed with thirst, and though it
was not too hot to sing (for I sang, and two lonely carabinieri passed
me singing, and we recognized as we saluted each other that the
mountain was full of songs), yet I longed for a bench, a flagon, and
shade.
And as I longed, a little house appeared, and a woman in the shade
sewing, and an old man. Also a bench and a table, and a tree over it.
There I sat down and drank white wine and water many times. The woman
charged me a halfpenny, and the old man would not talk. He did not
take his old age garrulously. It was his business, not mine; but I
should dearly have liked to have talked to him in Lingua Franca, and
to have heard him on the story of his mountain: where it was haunted,
by what, and on which nights it was dangerous to be abroad.
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