But for this
bare Tuscany I was never made.
How far I had gone I could not tell, nor precisely how much farther
San Quirico, the neighbouring town, might be. The imperfect map I had
bought at Siena was too minute to give me clear indications. I was
content to wait for evening, and then to go on till I found it. An
hour or so in the shade of a row of parched and dusty bushes I lay and
ate and drank my wine, and smoked, and then all day I slept, and woke
a while, and slept again more deeply. 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. They were upstanding, and very fine and noble in the
lines of the face. On their walls is set a marble tablet, on which it
is registered that the people of Tuscany, being asked whether they
would have their hereditary Duke or the House of Savoy, voted for the
latter by such and such a great majority; and this kind of tablet I
afterwards found was common to all these small towns. Then passing
down their long street I came, at the farther gate, to a great sight,
which the twilight still permitted me to receive in its entirety.
For San Quirico is built on the edge of a kind of swell in the land,
and here where I stood one looked over the next great wave; for the
shape of the view was, on a vast scale, just what one sees from a
lonely boat looking forward over a following sea.
The trough of the wave was a shallow purple valley, its arid quality
hidden by the kindly glimmer of evening; few trees stood in it to
break its sweep, and its irregularities and mouldings were just those
of a sweep of water after a gale. The crest of the wave beyond was
seventeen miles away. It had, as have also such crests at sea, one
highest, toppling peak in its long line, and this, against the clear
sky, one could see to be marked by buildings. These buildings were the
ruined castle and walls of Radicofani, and it lay straight on my way
to Rome.
It is a strange thing, arresting northern eyes, to see towns thus
built on summits up into the sky, and this height seemed the more
fantastic because it was framed. A row of cypress trees stood on
either side of the road where it fell from San Quirico, and, exactly
between these, this high crest, a long way off, was set as though by
design.
With more heart in me, and tempted by such an outline as one might be
by the prospect of adventure, I set out to cross the great bare run of
the valley. As I went, the mountain of Amiato came more and more
nearly abreast of me in the west; in its foothills near me were
ravines and unexpected rocks; upon one of them hung a village. I
watched its church and one tall cypress next it, as they stood black
against the last of daylight. Then for miles I went on the dusty way,
and crossed by old bridges watercourses in which stood nothing but
green pools; and the night deepened.
It was when I had crossed the greater part of the obscure plain, at
its lowest dip and not far from the climb up to Radicofani, that I saw
lights shining in a large farmhouse, and though it was my business to
walk by night, yet I needed companionship, so I went in.
There in a very large room, floored with brick and lit by one candle,
were two fine old peasants, with faces like apostles, playing a game
of cards. There also was a woman playing with a strong boy child,
that could not yet talk: and the child ran up to me. Nothing could
persuade the master of the house but that I was a very poor man who
needed sleep, and so good and generous was this old man that my
protests seemed to him nothing but the excuses and shame of poverty.
He asked me where I was going. I said, 'To Rome.' He came out with a
lantern to the stable, and showed me there a manger full of hay,
indicating that I might sleep in it... His candle flashed upon the
great silent oxen standing in rows; their enormous horns, three times
the length of what we know in England, filled me with wonder ... Well!
(may it count to me as gain!), rather than seem to offend him I lay
down in that manger, though I had no more desire to sleep than has the
flittermouse in our Sussex gloamings; also I was careful to offer no
money, for that is brutality.
