No mortal
can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the
serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway
region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the
greatest jest in the universe. At us....
That lake of Conterano - the accent is on the ante-penultima - it looked
appetising on the map, all alone out there. It attracted me strongly. I
pictured a placid expanse, an eye of blue, sleepily embowered among
wooded glens and throwing upward the gleam of its calm waters. Lakes are
so rare in Italy. During the whole of this summer I saw only one other,
fringed with the common English reed - two, rather, lying side by side,
one turbid and the other clear, and filling up two of those curious
circular depressions in the limestone. I rode past them on the watershed
behind Cineto Romano. These were sweet water. Of sulphur lakelets I also
saw two.
Sitting on a stone into which the coldness of midnight had entered
(Alatri lies at a good elevation) I awaited my companion in the dusk of
dawn. Soon enough, I knew, we should both be roasted. This half-hour's
shivering before sunrise in the square of Alatri, and listening to the
plash of the fountain, is one of those memories of the town which are
graven most clearly in my mind. I could point out, to-day, the very spot
whereon I sat.
We wandered along the Ferentino road to begin with, profiting by some
short cuts through chestnut woods; turned to the right, ever ascending,
behind that strange village of Fumone, aloft on its symmetrical hill;
thence by a mule-track onward. Many were the halts by the way. A decayed
roadside chapel with faded frescoes - a shepherd who played us some
melodies on his pipe - those wondrous red lilies, now in their prime,
glowing like lamps among the dark green undergrowth - the gateway of a
farmhouse being repaired - a reservoir of water full of newts - a
fascinating old woman who told us something about something - the distant
view upon the singular peak of Mount Cacume, they all gave us occasion
for lingering. Why not loaf and loiter in June? The days are so endless!
At last, through a gap in the landscape, we saw the lake at our feet,
simmering in the noonday beams - an everyday sheet of water, brown in
colour, with muddy banks and seemingly not a scrap of shade within
miles; one of those lakes which, by their periodical rising and sinking,
give so much trouble that there is talk, equally periodical, of draining
them off altogether. This one, they say, shifts continually and
sometimes reaches so low a level that rich crops are planted in its oozy
bed.
Here are countless frogs, and fish - tench; also a boat that belongs to
the man who rents the fishing. A sad accident happened lately with his
boat.
