Me with fried
fish from the lake, and the men gathered round me and attempted to
tell me of the road to Rome, while I in exchange made out to them as
much by gestures as by broken words the crossing of the Alps and the
Apennines.
Then, after my meal, one of the men told me I needed sleep; that there
were no rooms in that house (as I said, it was not an inn), but that
across the way he would show me one he had for hire. I tried to say
that my plan was to walk by night. They all assured me he would charge
me a reasonable sum. I insisted that the day was too hot for walking.
They told me, did these Etruscans, that I need fear no extortion from
so honest a man.
Certainly it is not easy to make everybody understand everything, and
I had had experience already up in the mountains, days before, of how
important it is not to be misunderstood when one is wandering in a
foreign country, poor and ill-clad. I therefore accepted the offer,
and, what was really very much to my regret, I paid the money he
demanded. I even so far fell in with the spirit of the thing as to
sleep a certain number of hours (for after all, my sleep that day in
the cart had been very broken, and instead of resting throughout the
whole of the heat I had taken a meal at Acquapendente). But I woke up
not long after midnight - perhaps between one and two o'clock - and went
out along the borders of the lake.
The moon had set; I wish I could have seen her hanging at the quarter
in the clear sky of that high crater, dipping into the rim of its
inland sea. It was perceptibly cold. I went on the road quite slowly,
till it began to climb, and when the day broke I found myself in a
sunken lane leading up to the town of Montefiascone.
The town lay on its hill in the pale but growing light. A great dome
gave it dignity, and a castle overlooked the lake. It was built upon
the very edge and lip of the volcano-cup commanding either side.
I climbed up this sunken lane towards it, not knowing what might be
beyond, when, at the crest, there shone before me in the sunrise one
of those unexpected and united landscapes which are among the glories
of Italy. They have changed the very mind in a hundred northern
painters, when men travelled hither to Rome to learn their art, and
coming in by her mountain roads saw, time and again, the set views of
plains like gardens, surrounded by sharp mountain-land and framed.
The road did not pass through the town; the grand though crumbling
gate of entry lay up a short straight way to the right, and below,
where the road continued down the slope, was a level of some eight
miles full of trees diminishing in distance. At its further side an
ample mountain, wooded, of gentle flattened outline, but high and
majestic, barred the way to Rome. It was yet another of those
volcanoes, fruitful after death, which are the mark of Latium: and it
held hidden, as did that larger and more confused one on the rim of
which I stood, a lake in its silent crater. But that lake, as I was to
find, was far smaller than the glittering sea of Bolsena, whose shores
now lay behind me.
The distance and the hill that bounded it should in that climate have
stood clear in the pure air, but it was yet so early that a thin haze
hung over the earth, and the sun had not yet controlled it: it was
even chilly. I could not catch the towers of Viterbo, though I knew
them to stand at the foot of the far mountain. I went down the road,
and in half-an-hour or so was engaged upon the straight line crossing
the plain.
I wondered a little how the road would lie with regard to the town,
and looked at my map for guidance, but it told me little. It was too
general, taking in all central Italy, and even large places were
marked only by small circles.
When I approached Viterbo I first saw an astonishing wall,
perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It
stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much
higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the
severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. For they had no
ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though many of age. Tall
towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation,
stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its
curtain. Then nearer by, one saw that it was not a huge castle, but
the wall of a city, for at a corner it went sharp round to contain the
town, and through one uneven place I saw houses. Many men were walking
in the roads alongside these walls, and there were gates pierced in
them whereby the citizens went in and out of the city as bees go in
and out of the little opening in a hive.
But my main road to Rome did not go through Viterbo, it ran alongside
of the eastern wall, and I debated a little with myself whether I
would go in or no. It was out of my way, and I had not entered
Montefiascone for that reason.
