No More Than At The Second View Of
It Did I Now Attempt The Ascent Of The Leaning Tower; I
Had discharged
this duty for life when I first saw it; with my seventy-one years upon
me, I was
Not willing to climb its winding stairs, and I doubted if I
could keep it from falling, as I then did, by inclining myself the other
way. I resolved that I would leave this to the new-comer; but I gladly
followed our cicerone across the daisied green from the cathedral to the
baptistery, where I found the famous echo waiting to welcome me back,
and greet me with its angelic sweetness, when the custodian who has it
in charge appealed to it; though its voice seemed to have been weakened
and coarsened in its forced replies to some rude Americans there, who
shouted out to it and mocked at it. One wished to ask them if they did
not know that this echo was sacred, and that their challenges of it were
a species of sacrilege. But doubtless that would not have availed to
silence them. By-and-by they went away, and then we were aware of an
interesting group of people by the font near the lovely Lombardic pulpit
of Nicola Pisano. They were peasants, by their dress - a young father and
mother and a little girl or two, and then a gentle, elderly woman, with
a baby in her arms, at which she looked proudly down.
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