Have You Not Read In Books How Men When They
See Even Divine Visions Are Terrified?
So as I looked at Lake Major in
its halo I also was afraid, and I was glad to cross the ridge and
crest of the hill and to shut out that picture framed all round with
glory.
But on the other side of the hill I found, to my great disgust, not as
I had hoped, a fine slope down leading to Lugano, but a second
interior valley and another range just opposite me. I had not the
patience to climb this so I followed down the marshy land at the foot
of it, passed round the end of the hill and came upon the railway,
which had tunnelled under the range I had crossed. I followed the
railway for a little while and at last crossed it, penetrated through
a thick brushwood, forded a nasty little stream, and found myself
again on the main road, wishing heartily I had never left it.
It was still at least seven miles to Lugano, and though all the way
was downhill, yet fatigue threatened me. These short cuts over marshy
land and through difficult thickets are not short cuts at all, and I
was just wondering whether, although it was already evening, I dared
not rest a while, when there appeared at a turn in the road a little
pink house with a yard all shaded over by a vast tree; there was also
a trellis making a roof over a plain bench and table, and on the
trellis grew vines.
'Into such houses,' I thought, 'the gods walk when they come down and
talk with men, and such houses are the scenes of adventures. I will go
in and rest.'
So I walked straight into the courtyard and found there a shrivelled
brown-faced man with kindly eyes, who was singing a song to himself.
He could talk a little French, a little English, and his own Italian
language. He had been to America and to Paris; he was full of
memories; and when I had listened to these and asked for food and
drink, and said I was extremely poor and would have to bargain, he
made a kind of litany of 'I will not cheat you; I am an honest man; I
also am poor,' and so forth. Nevertheless I argued about every
item - the bread, the sausage, and the beer. Seeing that I was in
necessity, he charged me about three times their value, but I beat him
down to double, and lower than that he would not go. Then we sat down
together at the table and ate and drank and talked of far countries;
and he would interject remarks on his honesty compared with the
wickedness of his neighbours, and I parried with illustrations of my
poverty and need, pulling out the four francs odd that remained to me,
and jingling them sorrowfully in my hand.
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