Part 6

Mother and daughters, men and maids, all walking amiably together, came to the garden gate with us. The _Signora_ here squeezed my hand a second time. The skittish young lady said "good-by" and then hid behind a bush, and her sister gave us each some roses. It was here too we were to part with Sandrino. He must be back in Montepulciano by six; more friends were coming. Would we write him postal cards to tell him of the distance and time we made? And that map of Tuscany we said we would give him, would we not remember it? He was going to take some great rides, and it would help him. Then we turned one way, and he, riding his best for the young ladies, the other, to be seen by us no more.

It was roses all the way to Cortona. They grew in villa gardens and along the road up the mountain; there were a few even among the olives, on the terraces whose stone embankments make the city from below look as if it were surrounded by many walls instead of one only. Near the town we met two young lovers, their arms around each other's waists, and a group of men who directed us in our search for the inn up a short steep hill leading away from the main road. Above, inside the city gate, several other citizens told us we must go down again, for the road we had left led right by the door. Clearly the Albergo della Stella--for that was its name--was not well known in Cortona. After a climb of three miles it was provoking to go even a foot out of our way, and we turned back in no cheerful mood. It was more disheartening when, having finally come to the Albergo, we found the lower floor, by which we entered, the home of pigs and donkeys and oxen. The major was right, I thought; Cortona was a rough place. The contrast when on the third floor of this establishment we were shown into a large, clean, really well-furnished room with window overlooking the valley, made us neglect to drive a close bargain with the _padrona_,--a neglect for which we suffered later.

LUCA SIGNORELLI'S TOWN.

"_By this time the pilgrims had a desire to go forward._"

The principal event of our stay in Cortona was a hunt for Luca Signorelli's house. Why we were so anxious to find it I did not know then, nor do I now; but we were very earnest about it. At the start a youth pursued us with the persistence of a government spy. It was useless to try and dodge him. No matter how long we were in churches or by what door we came out, he was always waiting in exactly the right place. In our indignation we would not ask him the way, but we did of some other boys, who forthwith led us such a wild-goose chase that I think before it was over there was not a street or corner of the town unvisited by us.

We next employed an old man as guide. Of course he knew all about Luca Signorelli. He could show us all his frescos and pictures in Cortona. Some of them were bad enough, as he supposed the _Signore_ knew; they were painted in the artist's youth. But we wanted to see his house? Ah! we had but to follow him, and he led us in triumph to that of Pietro da Cortona. As this would not do, he consulted with an old woman, who recommended a visit to a certain _padre_. The _padre_ was in his kitchen. He had never heard of Signorelli's house, and honestly admitted his ignorance. But could he show us some fine frescos or sell us antiquities? This failing, our guide hunted for some friends who, he declared, knew everything. But they were not in their shop, nor in the _caffè_, nor on the piazza, and in despair he took us to see another priest. The latter wore a jockey-cap and goggles, and was a learned man. He had heard of a life of Signorelli by a German. He had never read it, nor indeed could he say where it was to be had; but he knew there was such a book. He was certain our hunt was useless, since Signorelli had lived in so many houses the city could not afford to put tablets on them all, and so not one was marked. He himself was a professional letter-writer, and if the _Signore_ had any letters he wished written--? We then gave up the search and dismissed the old man with a franc, though he declared himself still willing to continue it. It was in this way we saw Cortona.

For the last few days we had begun to be haunted by the fear of the autumn rains. If they were as bad as Virgil says, and were to fall in dense sheets, tearing the crops up by the roots, while black whirlwinds set the stubble flying, and vast torrents filled ditches and raised rivers, the roads must certainly be made unridable. Since the morning we left Monte Oliveto the weather had been threatening, and now in Cortona there were heavy showers. As we sat in our room at the Albergo after our long tramp, and J. made a sketch from the window, we saw dark clouds gradually cover the sky. The lake, so blue yesterday, was gray and dull. The valley and the mountains were in shadow, save where the sun breaking through the clouds shone on a small square of olives and spread a golden mist over Monte Amiata. Before J. had finished, the gold faded into white and then deepened into purple, and we determined to be off early in the morning.

TO PERUGIA: BY TRAIN AND TRICYCLE.

"_Now you must note that the City stood upon a mighty hill, but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease._"

The next day I was tired and in no humor for riding. J. wanted once to try the tricycle without luggage over the Italian roads. It was settled then between us that I should go alone by train to Perugia, where we should meet. Before seven we had our breakfast and the _padrona_ brought us her bill. Because we had not bargained in the beginning she overcharged us for everything; but we refused to pay more than we knew was her due. There was the inevitable war of words, more unpleasant than usual because her voice was loud and harsh and asthmatic. She grew tearful before it was over, but finally thanked us for what we gave her, and asked us to come again so gently that we mistrusted her. I thought it wise to wait with the bags at the station, though my train would not start till eleven.

It was a beautiful coast down the mountain between the olives, four miles with feet up. The clouds had rolled away during the night, and it was bright and warm at the station when J. left me to go on his way. It was quiet too, and for some time I was alone with the porters. But presently a young woman with a child in her arms came by. She stopped and looked at me sympathetically. I spoke to her, and then she came nearer and patted me on the shoulder and said, "_Poverina!_" It seems she had seen J. bring me to the station and then turn back by himself. I do not know what she thought was the trouble, but she felt sorry for me. She was the wife of the telegraph operator, and lived in rooms above the station. She took me to them, and then she brought me an illustrated translation of "Gil Blas" to look at while she made me a cup of coffee. Every few minutes she sighed and said again, "_Poverina!_" She gave me her card,--Elena Olas, _nata_ Bocci, was her name. I wrote mine on a slip of paper, and when the train, only an hour late, came, we parted with great friendship.

A regiment of soldiers was on its way to Perugia and made the journey very lively. Peasants who had somehow heard of its coming were in wait at every station with apples and chestnuts and wine, over which there was much noisy bargaining. At other times the soldiers sang. As the train carried us by the lake from which the mountains in the distance rose white and shadowy and phantom-like, and by Passignano,--built right in the water, with reeds instead of flowers around the houses, where fishermen were out in their boats near the weirs,--and then by Maggiore and Ellora on their hill-tops, I heard the constant refrain of the soldiers' song, and it reminded me of my friend at Cortona, for it was a plaintive regret for "_Poverina mia!_" Then there came a pause in the singing, and a voice called out, "_Ecco_, Perugia!" I looked from the carriage window, and there, far above on the mountain, I saw it, white and shining, like a beautiful city of the sun.

At the station J. met me. He had been waiting an hour, having made the thirty-six miles between Cortona and Perugia in three hours and a half. He too had had his adventures. Beyond Passignano he met a man on foot who spoke to him, and to whom he said, "_Buon Giorno_." "Good-morning," cried the man in good cockney English, and J. in sheer astonishment stopped the tricycle. The tramp--for tramp he was--explained that he was an Englishman and in a bad way. He had been at Perugia with a circus which had little or no success, and the rascally Frenchman who managed it had broken up and made off, leaving him with nothing. He was now on his way to Florence, where he wanted to be taken on by Prince Strozzi, who kept English jockeys. But in the mean time he was hungry and had no money, and must tramp it all the way. J. bethought him of the card to the gentleman of Cortona who had married an English wife. We had not used it, and it seemed a pity to waste it. The English lady doubtless would be glad of an opportunity to help a countryman. So he gave it to the tramp, together with a franc for his immediate wants. The latter looked at the money. He supposed he could do something with it, he grumbled. He really was grateful, however, for he offered to push the machine up a hill down which he had just walked. But J. telling him to hurry on, engaged instead the services of a small boy who was going his way. For pay, he gave the child a coast down the other side into his native village, than which _soldi_ could not have been sweeter. Did not all his playmates see him ride by in his pride?

Arriving in Perugia, J. himself was a hero for a time. Many officers with their wives were in the station, and in their curiosity so far forgot their usual dignity as to surround him and pester him with questions as to his whence and whither and what speed he could make.

It is a long way from the station up the mountain to the town, but we went faster than we ever climbed mountain before, for we tied the tricycle to the back of the diligence. J. rode and steered it, but I sat inside, ending my day's journey as I had begun it, in commonplace fashion. The driver was full of admiration. We must go to Terni on our velocipede, he said; in the mountains beyond Spoleto we should go down-hill for seven miles. _Ecco!_ no need of a diligence then!

AT PERUGIA.

"_And did see such things there, the remembrance of which will stick by me as long as I live._"

The _padrone_ of the Albergo at Perugia was a man of parts. He could speak English. When we complimented him on a black cat which was always in his office, he answered, with eyes fixed on vacancy, and pausing between each word like a child saying its lesson: "Yes-it-is-a-good-cat. I-have-one-dog-and-four-cats. This-cat-is-the-fath-er-of-the-oth-er-cats. One-are-red-and-three-is-white." And when we had occasion to thank him, he knew enough to tell us we were very much obliged.

But we gave him small chance to display his powers. There was little to keep us in the Albergo, when, after a few minutes' walk we could be in the piazza, where the sun shone on Pisano's fountain, and on the Palazzo of the Baglioni and the Duomo opposite. But what a fall was there! A couple of _gendarmes_, priests walking two by two, a few beggars, were the only people we saw in this broad piazza, where at one time men and women, driven to frenzy by the words of Saint Bernardino, spoken from the pulpit by the Duomo door, almost fell into the fire they had kindled to burn their false hair and ornaments, their dice and cards; and where at another Baglioni fought, with the young Raphael looking on to paint later one at least of the combatants; and where the beautiful Grifonetto lay in death agony, the avengers of his murdered kinsmen waiting to see him die, the heads of his fellow-assassins looking grimly down from the Palazzo walls, and Atalanta, his mother, giving him forgiveness for the deed, for which but yesterday she had cursed him. In the aisles of the Duomo, once so stained with the blood of the Baglioni that they had to be purified with wine before prayers could again be offered in them, a procession of white-robed priests and acolytes, bearing cross and censer, passed from one chapel to another before a congregation of two or three old women. It was the same in the narrow streets; all is now still and peaceful where of old Baglioni, single-handed, kept back the forces of Oddi, their mortal foes. Only the memory of their fierceness remains; though I have two friends who say that in the dark street behind the Palazzo, where brave Simonetto and Astore fought the enemy until corpses lay in piles around them, they one night heard voices singing sadly, as if in lamentation; and these voices led them onwards under one archway and then another until suddenly the sounds ceased. But when they turned to go homewards, lo! they had lost their way. The next morning they returned that they might by daylight see whence the music could have come. But all along the street was a dead wall. None but spirits could have sung there; and what spirits would dare to lift their voices in this famous street but those of Baglioni?

It must be the degeneracy of modern warriors that sets these heroes of the old school to singing lamentations. The Grifonettos and Astores who feasted on blood, could they come back to life and their native town, would have little sympathy with the captains and colonels who now drink tamarind-water in the _caffè_, booted and spurred though the latter be. The _caffè_ is everywhere the lounging-place of Italian officers, but in Perugia it seemed to be their headquarters. There was one on the Corso, a few doors from the Palazzo, which they specially patronized. They were there in the morning even before the shops were opened, and again at noon, and yet again in the evening, while at other times they walked to and fro in front of it, as if on guard. But though the youngest as well as the oldest patronized it, the distinctions of rank between them were observed as scrupulously as Dickens says they are with the Chatham and Rochester aristocracy. The colonel associated with nothing lower than a major, the latter in turn drawing the line at the captain, and so it went down to the third lieutenant, who lorded it only over the common soldier. On the whole, I think the lesser officers had the best of it; for whether they eat cakes and drank sweet drinks, or played cards, they were always sociable and merry. Whereas, sometimes the colonel sat solitary in his grandeur, silent except for the few words with the boy selling matches as he hunted through the stock to find a box with a pretty picture.

We were long enough in Perugia to carry the _Abate's_ letters to San Pietro. The monks to whom they were written were away, but a third came in their place and gave us welcome. He showed J. the inner cloister, to which I could not go: women were not allowed there. It was because of my skirts, he said; and yet he too wore skirts, and he spread out his cassock on each side. While they were gone I waited in the church. I wonder if ghostly voices are never heard within it. The monks, long dead, whose love and even life it was to make it beautiful until its walls and ceilings were rich and glowing, its choir a miracle of carving, and its sacristy hung with prayer-inspiring pictures, have, like the Baglioni, cause to bewail the degenerate latter day. The beauty they created now lives but for the benefit of a handful of monks whose monastery is turned into a Boys' Agricultural School, and for the occasional tourist. Later from the high terrace of the park opposite San Pietro we saw the boys in their blue blouses digging and hoeing in the fields under the olives, where probably the monks themselves once worked. There is in this little park an amphitheatre with archway, bearing the Perugian griffin in the centre. It is shaded by dense ilex-trees, from whose branches a raven must once have croaked; for evil has come upon the place, as it has upon the gray monastery so near. Instead of nobles and men-at-arms and councillors of state, two or three poor women with their babies sat on the stone benches gossiping. And as we lingered there in the late afternoon there came from San Pietro the sound, not of monks chanting vespers, but of some one playing the "Blue Danube" on an old jingling piano. Only the valley below, and the Tiber winding through it, and the mountains beyond are unchanged.

ACROSS THE TIBER TO ASSISI.

"_And I slept and dreamed again and saw the same two pilgrims going down the mountains along the highway towards the city._"

When we left Perugia in the early morning we passed first by the statue of Julius II., thus receiving, we said to each other, the bronze pontiff's benediction. We imagined this to be an original idea; but it is useless to try to be original. Since then we have remembered the same thought came to Miriam and Donatello when they made the statue their trysting-place. Then we rode through the piazza, where a market was being held, and where at one end a long row of women holding baskets of eggs stood erect, though all around other women and even men, selling fruits and vegetables, sat comfortably on low stools.

On the other side of the Porta Romana we saw that while Perugia was bright and clear in the sunlight, a thick white mist covered the valley, so that it looked as if a great lake, bounded by the mountains, lay below. The chrysanthemums and marigolds, hanging over high garden walls, and the grass by the road-side glistened with dew. Shining silver cobwebs hung on the hedges. Before many minutes, so fast did we go, we were riding right into the mist. We could see but a few feet in front of us, and the olives on either side, through the heavy white veil, looked like spectres. We passed no one but a man carrying a lantern and a cage of owls. It seemed but natural that so uncanny a ride should lead to a home of shadows. And when we came to the tomb of the Volumnii at the foot of the mountain we left the tricycle without, and went down for a while into its darkness and damp. When we came out the mist had disappeared and the road lay through sunshine.

A little farther on we had our first near view of the Tiber. We crossed it by the old Ponte San Giovanni, so narrow that there was not room for us to pass a boy and a donkey just in front. J. called, and the boy pushed his donkey close to the stone wall; but for all that we could not pass. Even as J. called he was stopped by a sudden sharp pain in his side, the result probably of his descent into the tomb while he was still warm; for he had back-pedalled coming down the mountain. And so we waited for many minutes on the bridge to see, not the yellow Tiber one always hears about, but a river blue in mid-stream, white where it came running over the mill-wheel and down the dam, and red and yellow and green where it reflected the poplars and oaks, and the skirts and handkerchiefs of the women washing on its banks. But after the bridge we left the river, for we were bound for Assisi. We had a quiet, peaceful ride for several miles on the Umbrian plain, where in the old times no one dared to go without the permission of the Baglioni, between vineyards and fields where men were ploughing, and through insignificant little villages, until we came out upon the large piazza in front of Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was crowded with peasants, for market was just over, and there came from every side the sound of many voices. When we rode by we were surrounded at once, two or three men keeping close to our side to sing the praises of the hotels at Assisi and shower their cards upon us. They pursued us even into the church, and as far as the little hermitage beneath the dome, to tell us that each and all could speak English.

If the Umbrians about Assisi were always like this, Saint Francis was a wise man to hide himself in the woods and make friends with beasts and birds. Over the sunny roads beyond Santa Maria, where he and Fra Egidio walked singing and exhorting men and women to repentance, we wheeled imploring, or rather commanding, them to get out of the way. It was a hard pull up the mountain-side, the harder because the great monastery on its high foundations seemed always so far above us. When almost at the city gate a monk in brown robes, the knotted cord about his waist, passed. He stopped to look, but it was with a frown of disapproval; I think Saint Francis would have smiled.

AT ASSISI.

"_Methought these things did ravish my heart; I would have stayed at that man's house a twelvemonth but that I knew I had farther to go._"

It was just noon when we reached Assisi, but we rode no more that day. We spent the afternoon in the town of Saint Francis. The Albergo we selected from the many recommended was without the large cloisters of the monastery. The waiter at once remembered that J. had been there before, though eighteen months had passed since his first visit. The _Signore_ had two ladies with him then, he said. He was delighted with the velocipede. It was the first time in all his life he had seen one with three wheels. Nothing would do but he must show us the finest road to Rome. He spread our map on the table as we eat our dinner, and put on his glasses,--for he was a little bad in the eyes, he explained,--and then he pointed out the very route we had already decided upon. _Ecco!_ here, between Spoleto and Terni, we should have a long climb up the mountain, but then there would be seven miles down the other side. Ah! that would be fine! This long coast to Terni was clearly to make up for the hardships we already had endured on toilsome up-grades.