But Why Did _This_ Tenth
Milestone From _This_ Roman Town Keep Its Name?
LECTOR. I am indifferent.
AUCTOR. I will tell you. Up in the tangle of the Carrara mountains,
overhanging the Garfagnana, was a wild tribe, whose name I forget
(unless it were the Bruttii), but which troubled the Romans not a
little, defeating them horribly, and keeping the legionaries in some
anxiety for years. So when the soldiers marched out north from Luca
about six miles, they could halt and smile at each other, and say 'At
_Sextant..._ that's all right. All safe so far!' and therefore only a
little village grew up at this little rest and emotion. But as they
got nearer the gates of the hills they began to be visibly perturbed,
and they would say: 'The eighth mile! cheer up!' Then 'The ninth mile!
Sanctissima Madonna! Have you seen anything moving on the heights?'
But when they got to the _tenth_ milestone, which stands before the
very jaws of the defile, then indeed they said with terrible emphasis,
_'Ad Decimam!'_ And there was no restraining them: they would camp and
entrench, or die in the venture: for they were Romans and stern
fellows, and loved a good square camp and a ditch, and sentries and a
clear moon, and plenty of sharp stakes, and all the panoply of war.
That is the origin of Decimo.
For all my early start, the intolerable heat had again taken the
ascendant before I had fairly entered the plain. Then, it being yet
but morning, I entered from the north the town of Lucca, which is the
neatest, the regularest, the exactest, the most fly-in-amber little
town in the world, with its uncrowded streets, its absurd
fortifications, and its contented silent houses - all like a family at
ease and at rest under its high sun. It is as sharp and trim as its
own map, and that map is as clear as a geometrical problem. Everything
in Lucca is good.
I went with a short shadow, creeping when I could on the eastern side
of the street to save the sunlight; then I came to the main square,
and immediately on my left was the Albergo di Something-or-other, a
fine great hotel, but most unfortunately right facing the blazing sky.
I had to stop outside it to count my money. I counted it wrong and
entered. There I saw the master, who talked French.
'Can you in an hour,' said I, 'give me a meal to my order, then a bed,
though it is early day?' This absurd question I made less absurd by
explaining to him my purpose. How I was walking to Rome and how, being
northern, I was unaccustomed to such heat; how, therefore, I had
missed sleep, and would find it necessary in future to walk mainly by
night. For I had now determined to fill the last few marches up in
darkness, and to sleep out the strong hours of the sun.
All this he understood; I ordered such a meal as men give to beloved
friends returned from wars. I ordered a wine I had known long ago in
the valley of the Saone in the old time of peace before ever the Greek
came to the land. While they cooked it I went to their cool and
splendid cathedral to follow a late Mass. Then I came home and ate
their admirable food and drank the wine which the Burgundians had
trodden upon the hills of gold so many years before. They showed me a
regal kind of a room where a bed with great hangings invited repose.
All my days of marching, the dirty inns, the forests, the nights
abroad, the cold, the mists, the sleeplessness, the faintness, the
dust, the dazzling sun, the Apennines - all my days came over me, and
there fell on me a peaceful weight, as his two hundred years fell upon
Charlemagne in the tower of Saragossa when the battle was done; after
he had curbed the valley of Ebro and christened Bramimonde.
So I slept deeply all day long; and, outside, the glare made a silence
upon the closed shutters, save that little insects darted in the outer
air.
When I woke it was evening. So well had they used me that I paid what
they asked, and, not knowing what money remained over, I left their
town by the southern gate, crossed the railway and took the road.
My way lay under the flank of that mountain whereby the Luccans cannot
see Pisa, or the Pisans cannot see Lucca - it is all one to me, I shall
not live in either town, God willing; and if they are so eager to
squint at one another, in Heaven's name, cannot they be at the pains
to walk round the end of the hill? It is this laziness which is the
ruin of many; but not of pilgrims, for here was I off to cross the
plain of Arno in one night, and reach by morning the mouth and gate of
that valley of the Elsa, which same is a very manifest proof of how
Rome was intended to be the end and centre of all roads, the chief
city of the world, and the Popes' residence - as, indeed, it plainly is
to this day, for all the world to deny at their peril, spiritual,
geographical, historical, sociological, economic, and philosophical.
For if some such primeval and predestinarian quality were not inherent
in the City, how, think you, would the valley of the Serchio - the hot,
droughty, and baking Garfagnana - lead down pointing straight to Rome;
and how would that same line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting
it exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa, itself leading up
directly towards Rome? I say, nowhere in the world is such a
coincidence observable, and they that will not take it for a portent
may go back to their rationalism and consort with microbes and make
their meals off logarithms, washed down with an exact distillation of
the root of minus one; and the peace of fools, that is the deepest and
most balmy of all, be theirs for ever and ever.
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