The Afternoon Sunlight Was Prolonging The Day There As Well As It Could,
And We Should Have Liked To Linger With It As Late As It Would, But
There Were Other Places In Pisa Calling Us, And We Must Go.
We found our
driver, and his black-eyed boy beside him on the box, waiting for us at
the cathedral door, and we seem to have left it pretty much to them
where we should go.
They decided us, if we really left it to them,
mainly for the outside of things, so that we might see as much of Pisa
as possible; but it appears to have been their notion that we ought to
visit, at least, the inside of the Church of the Knights of St.
Stephen. I do not know whether I protested or not that I had abundantly
seen this already, but, at any rate, I am now glad that they took us
there. As every traveller will pretend to remember, the main business of
the knights was to fight the Barbary pirates, and the main business of
their church is now to serve as a repository of the prows of the galleys
and the flags which they took in their battles with the infidels. There
are other monuments of their valor, but by all odds the flags will be
the most interesting to the American visitor, because of the start that
many of them will give him by their resemblance to our own banner, with
their red-and-white stripes, which the eye follows in vivid expectation
of finding the blue field of stars in the upper left-hand corner. It
never does find this, and that is the sufficient reason for holding to
the theory that our flag was copied from the armorial bearings of the
Washington family, and not taken from the standard of those paynim
corsairs; but there is poignant instant when one trembles.
We viewed, of course, the exterior of the edifice standing on the site
of the Tower of Famine, where the cruel archbishop starved the Count
Ugolino and his grandchildren to death; and we drove by the buildings of
Pisa's famous university, which we afterward fancied rather pervaded the
city with the young and ardent life of its students. It is no great
architectural presence, but there are churches and palaces to make up
for that. Everywhere you chance on them in the narrow streets and the
ample piazzas, but the palaces follow mostly the stately curve of the
Arno, where some of them have condescended to the office of hotels, and
where, I believe, one might live in economy and comfort; or, at any
rate, I should like to try. It would get rather warm there in May, and
July and August are not to be thought of, but all the other year it
would be divine, with such a prospect as can hardly be matched anywhere
else. Pisa used once to be the resort of many seeking health or warmth,
and for mere climate it ought again to come into favor.
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