That enormous march from Faido, though it had been
wisely broken by the siesta at Bellinzona, needed more than a few cold
hours under trees, and I thought of the three poor francs in my
pocket, and of the thirty-eight miles remaining to Milan.
The stars were beyond the middle of their slow turning, and I watched
them, splendid and in order, for sympathy, as I also regularly, but
slowly and painfully, dragged myself along my appointed road. But in a
very short time a great, tall, square, white house stood right on the
roadway, and to my intense joy I saw a light in one of its higher
windows. Standing therefore beneath, I cried at the top of my voice,
'Hola!' five or six times. A woman put her head out of the window into
the fresh night, and said, 'You cannot sleep here; we have no rooms,'
then she remained looking out of her window and ready to analyse the
difficulties of the moment; a good-natured woman and fat.
In a moment another window at the same level, but farther from me,
opened, and a man leaned out, just as those alternate figures come in
and out of the toys that tell the weather. 'It is impossible,' said
the man; 'we have no rooms.'
Then they talked a great deal together, while I shouted, _'Quid vis?
Non e possibile dormire in la foresta! e troppo fredo! Vis ne me
assassinare? Veni de Lugano - e piu - non e possibile ritornare!'_ and
so forth.
They answered in strophe and antistrophe, sometimes together in full
chorus, and again in semichorus, and with variations, that it was
impossible. Then a light showed in the chinks of their great door; the
lock grated, and it opened. A third person, a tall youth, stood in the
hall. I went forward into the breach and occupied the hall. He blinked
at me above a candle, and murmured, as a man apologizing 'It is not
possible.'
Whatever I have in common with these southerners made me understand
that I had won, so I smiled at him and nodded; he also smiled, and at
once beckoned to me. He led me upstairs, and showed me a charming bed
in a clean room, where there was a portrait of the Pope, looking
cunning; the charge for that delightful and human place was sixpence,
and as I said good-night to the youth, the man and woman from above
said good-night also. And this was my first introduction to the most
permanent feature in the Italian character. The good people!
When I woke and rose I was the first to be up and out. It was high
morning. The sun was not yet quite over the eastern mountains, but I
had slept, though so shortly yet at great ease, and the world seemed
new and full of a merry mind. The sky was coloured like that high
metal work which you may see in the studios of Paris; there was gold
in it fading into bronze, and above, the bronze softened to silver.
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