I say my fear had been considerable, especially of the man with the
knife, but I got too angry to remember it, and advancing my face also
to this insulter's I shouted, _'Dio Ladro! Dios di mi alma!
Sanguinamento! Nombre di Dios! Che? Che vole? Non sono da Venezia io!
Sono de Francia! Je m'en fiche da vestra Venezia! Non se vede che non
parlar vestra lingua? Che sono forestiere?'_ and so forth. At this
they evidently divided into two parties, and all began raging amongst
themselves, and some at me, while the others argued louder and louder
that there was an error.
The little innkeeper caught my arm over the counter, and I turned
round sharply, thinking he was doing me a wrong, but I saw him nodding
and winking at me, and he was on my side. This was probably because he
was responsible if anything happened, and he alone could not fly from
the police.
He made them a speech which, for all I know, may have been to the
effect that he had known and loved me from childhood, or may have been
that he knew me for one Jacques of Turin, or may have been any other
lie. Whatever lie it was, it appeased them. Their anger went down to a
murmur, just like soda-water settling down into a glass.
I stood wine; we drank. I showed them my book, and as my pencil needed
sharpening the large man lent me his knife for courtesy. When I got it
in my hand I saw plainly that it was no knife for stabbing with; it
was a pruning-knife, and would have bit the hand that cherished it (as
they say of serpents). On the other hand, it would have been a good
knife for ripping, and passable at a slash. You must not expect too
much of one article.
I took food, but I saw that in this parish it was safer to sleep out
of doors than in; so in the falling evening, but not yet sunset, I
wandered on, not at a pace but looking for shelter, and I found at
last just what I wanted: a little shed, with dried ferns (as it
seemed) strewed in a corner, a few old sacks, and a broken piece of
machinery - though this last was of no use to me.
I thought: 'It will be safe here, for I shall rise before day, and the
owner, if there is one, will not disturb me.'
The air was fairly warm. The place quite dry. The open side looked
westward and a little south.
The sun had now set behind the Apennines, and there was a deep
effulgence in the sky. I drank a little wine, lit a pipe, and watched
the west in silence.
Whatever was left of the great pall from which all that rain had
fallen, now was banked up on the further side of heaven in toppling
great clouds that caught the full glow of evening.
The great clouds stood up in heaven, separate, like persons; and no
wind blew; but everything was full of evening. I worshipped them so
far as it is permitted to worship inanimate things.
They domed into the pure light of the higher air, inviolable. They
seemed halted in the presence of a commanding majesty who ranked them
all in order.
This vision filled me with a large calm which a travelled man may find
on coming to his home, or a learner in the communion of wise men.
Repose, certitude, and, as it were, a premonition of glory occupied my
spirit. Before it was yet quite dark I had made a bed out of the dry
bracken, covered myself with the sacks and cloths, and very soon I
fell asleep, still thinking of the shapes of clouds and of the power
of God.
Next morning it was as I had thought. Going out before it was fully
light, a dense mist all around and a clear sky showed what the day was
to be. As I reached Medesano the sun rose, and in half-an-hour the air
was instinct with heat; within an hour it was blinding. An early Mass
in the church below the village prepared my day, but as I took coffee
afterwards in a little inn, and asked about crossing the Taro to
Fornovo - my first point - to my astonishment they shook their heads.
The Taro was impassable.
Why could it not be crossed? My very broken language made it difficult
for me to understand. They talked _oframi,_ which I thought meant
oars; but _rami,_ had I known it, meant the separate branches or
streams whereby these torrential rivers of Italy flow through their
arid beds.
I drew a boat and asked if one could not cross in that (for I was a
northerner, and my idea of a river was a river with banks and water in
between), but they laughed and said 'No.' Then I made the motion of
swimming. They said it was impossible, and one man hung his head to
indicate drowning. It was serious. They said to-morrow, or rather next
day, one might do it.
Finally, a boy that stood by said he remembered a man who knew the
river better than any one, and he, if any one could, would get me
across. So I took the boy with me up the road, and as we went I saw,
parallel to the road, a wide plain of dazzling rocks and sand, and
beyond it, shining and silhouetted like an Arab village, the group of
houses that was Fornovo.
