I ate and drank, asking every one
questions of Rome, and I passed under their great gate and pursued the
road to the plain. In the mist, as it rose, there rose also a passion
to achieve.
All the night long, mile after mile, I hurried along the Cassian Way.
For five days I had slept through the heat, and the southern night had
become my daytime; and though the mist was dense, and though the moon,
now past her quarter, only made a vague place in heaven, yet
expectation and fancy took more than the place of sight. In this fog I
felt with every step of the night march the approach to the goal.
Long past the place I had marked as a halt, long past Sette Vene, a
light blurred upon the white wreaths of vapour; distant songs and the
noise of men feasting ended what had been for many, many hours - for
more than twenty miles of pressing forward - an exaltation worthy of
the influence that bred it. Then came on me again, after the full
march, a necessity for food and for repose. But these things, which
have been the matter of so much in this book, now seemed subservient
only to the reaching of an end; they were left aside in the mind.
It was an inn with trellis outside making an arbour.
