Tempted to go back to Airolo and sleep and next morning to attempt a
crossing. But I had accepted my fate on the Gries and the falling road
also held me, and so I continued my way.
Everything was pleasing in this new valley under the sunlight that
still came strongly from behind the enormous mountains; everything
also was new, and I was evidently now in a country of a special kind.
The slopes were populous, I had come to the great mother of fruits and
men, and I was soon to see her cities and her old walls, and the
rivers that glide by them. Church towers also repeated the same shapes
up and up the wooded hills until the villages stopped at the line of
the higher slopes and at the patches of snow. The houses were square
and coloured; they were graced with arbours, and there seemed to be
all around nothing but what was reasonable and secure, and especially
no rich or poor.
I noticed all these things on the one side and the other till, not two
hours from Airolo, I came to a step in the valley. For the valley of
the Ticino is made up of distinct levels, each of which might have
held a lake once for the way it is enclosed: and each level ends in
high rocks with a gorge between them. Down this gorge the river
tumbles in falls and rapids and the road picks its way down steeply,
all banked and cut, and sometimes has to cross from side to side by a
bridge, while the railway above one overcomes the sharp descent by
running round into the heart of the hills through circular tunnels and
coming out again far below the cavern where it plunged in. Then when
all three - the river, the road, and the railway - - have got over the
great step, a new level of the valley opens. This is the way the road
comes into the south, and as I passed down to the lower valley, though
it was darkening into evening, something melted out of the mountain
air, there was content and warmth in the growing things, and I found
it was a place for vineyards. So, before it was yet dark, I came into
Faido, and there I slept, having at last, after so many adventures,
crossed the threshold and occupied Italy.
Next day before sunrise I went out, and all the valley was adorned and
tremulous with the films of morning.
Now all of you who have hitherto followed the story of this great
journey, put out of your minds the Alps and the passes and the
snows - postpone even for a moment the influence of the happy dawn and
of that South into which I had entered, and consider only this truth,
that I found myself just out of Faido on this blessed date of God with
eight francs and forty centimes for my viaticum and temporal provision
wherewith to accomplish the good work of my pilgrimage.
Now when you consider that coffee and bread was twopence and a penny
for the maid, you may say without lying that I had left behind me the
escarpment of the Alps and stood upon the downward slopes of the first
Italian stream and at the summit of the entry road with _eight francs
ten centimes_ in my pocket - my body hearty and my spirit light, for
the arriving sun shot glory into the sky. The air was keen, and a
fresh day came radiant over the high eastern walls of the valley.
And what of that? Why, one might make many things of it. For instance,
eight francs and ten centimes is a very good day's wages; it is a lot
to spend in cab fares but little for a _coupe._ It is a heavy price
for Burgundy but a song for Tokay. It is eighty miles third-class and
more; it is thirty or less first-class; it is a flash in a train _de
luxe,_ and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. It would be
enormous to give it to an apostle begging at a church door, but
nothing to spend on luncheon.
Properly spent I can imagine it saving five or six souls, but I cannot
believe that so paltry a sum would damn half an one.
Then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing about. Thus, if one were
a modern fool one might write a dirge with 'Huit francs et dix
centimes' all chanted on one low sad note, and coming in between
brackets for a 'motif, and with a lot about autumn and Death - which
last, Death that is, people nowadays seem to regard as something odd,
whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world. Or
one might make the words the Backbone of a triolet, only one would
have to split them up to fit it into the metre; or one might make it
the decisive line in a sonnet; or one might make a pretty little lyric
of it, to the tune of 'Madame la Marquise' -
_'Huit francs et dix centimes, Tra la la, la la la.'_
Or one might put it rhetorically, fiercely, stoically, finely,
republicanly into the Heroics of the Great School. Thus -
HERNANI _(with indignation)... dans ces efforts sublimes_ _'Qu'avez
vous a offrir?'
RUY BLAS _(simply) Huit francs et dix centimes!_
Or finally (for this kind of thing cannot go on for ever), one might
curl one's hair and dye it black, and cock a dirty slouch hat over one
ear and take a guitar and sit on a flat stone by the roadside and
cross one's legs, and, after a few pings and pongs on the strings,
strike up a Ballad with the refrain -
_Car j'ai toujours huit francs et dix centimes!_ a jocular,
sub-sardonic, a triumphant refrain!
