TWO PILGRIMS' PROGRESS.
We stayed in Florence three days before we started on our pilgrimage to Rome. We needed a short rest. The railway journey straight through from London had been unusually tiresome because of our tricycle. From the first mention of our proposed pilgrimage, kind friends in England had warned us that on the way to Italy the machine would be a burden worse than the Old Man of the Sea; porters, guards, and custom-house officials would look upon it as lawful prey, and we should pay more to get it to Italy than it had cost in the beginning. It is wonderful how clever one's friends are to discover the disagreeable, and then how eager to point it out!
Our first experience at the station at Holborn Viaduct seemed to confirm their warnings. We paid eight shillings to have the tricycle carried to Dover, porters amiably remarking it would take a pile of money to get such a machine to Italy. Crossing the Channel, we paid five-and-sixpence more, and the sailors told us condolingly we should have an awful time of it in the custom-house at Calais. This, however, turned out a genuine seaman's yarn. The tricycle was examined carefully, but to be admired, not valued. "That's well made, that!" one guard declared with appreciation, and others playfully urged him to mount it. To make a long story short, our friends proved false prophets. From Calais to Florence we paid only nine francs freight and thirty-five francs duty at Chiasso. But unfortunately we never knew what might be about to happen. We escaped in one place only to be sure the worst would befall us in the next. It was not until the cause of our anxiety was safe in Florence that our mental burden was taken away.
But here were more friends who called our pilgrimage a desperate journey, and asked if we had considered what we might meet with in the way we were going. There was the cholera. But we represented that to get to Rome we should not go near the stricken provinces. Then they persisted that our road lay through valleys reeking with malaria until November at least. We should not reach these valleys before November, was our reply. Well, then, did we know we must pass through lonely districts where escaped convicts roamed abroad; and in and out of villages where fleas were like unto a plague of Egypt, and good food as scarce as in the wilderness? In a word, ours was a fool's errand. Perhaps it was because so little had come of the earlier prophecies that we gave slight heed to these. They certainly made no difference in our plans. On October 16, the third morning after our arrival, we rode forth sans flea-powder or brandy, sans quinine or beef-extract, sans everything our friends counselled us to take—and hence, according to them, right into the jaws of death.
The padrone who helped to strap our portfolio and two bags to the luggage-carrier, our coats to the handle-bars, and the knapsack to J.'s back, and Mr. Mead, the one friend who foretold pleasure, stood at the door of the Hotel Minerva to see us off. The sunlight streamed over the Piazza of Santa Maria Novella and the beggars on the church-steps and the cabmen who good-naturedly cried "No carriage for you," as we wheeled slowly on, over to the Via Tornabuoni, past Doni's, by Viesseux's, up the Lung' Arno to the crowded Ponte Vecchio where for this once at least we were not attacked by the little shopmen, by the Via de' Bardi, then back through the Borgo San Jacopo, again along the Lung' Arno, and then around with the twisting street-car tracks, through the Porta San Frediano, and out on the broad white road which leads to Pisa.
Over the Ponte Vecchio. Page 14.
But even before we left Florence we met with our first accident. The luggage-carrier swung around from the middle to the side of the backbone. The one evil consequence, however, was a half-hour's delay. Beyond the gate we stopped at the first blacksmith's. Had either of us known the Italian word for "wire," the delay might have been shorter. It was only by elaborate pantomime we could make our meaning clear. Then the blacksmith took the matter in his own hands, unstrapped the bags, and went to work with screw-driver and wire, while the entire neighborhood, backed by passing pedlers and street-car drivers and citizens, pronounced the tricycle "beautiful!" "a new horse!" "a tramway!" When the luggage-carrier was fastened securely and loaded again, the blacksmith was so proud of his success that he declared "nothing" was his charge. But he was easily persuaded to take something to drink the Signore's health. After this there were no further stops.
Our road for some distance went over streets laid with the great stones of the old Tuscan pavement—and for tricyclers these streets are not very bad going—between tall gray houses, with shrines built in them, and those high walls which radiate from Florence in every direction, and keep one from seeing the gardens and green places within. Women plaiting straw, great yellow bunches of which hung at their waists, and children greeted us with shouts. Shirtless bakers, their hands white with flour, and barbers holding their razors, men with faces half shaved and still lathered, and others with wine-glasses to their lips, rushed to look at this new folly of the foreigner—for ours was the first tandem tricycle ever seen in Italy. At Signa, on the steep up-grade just outside the town, we had a lively spurt with a dummy engine, the engineer apparently trying to run us down as we were about to cross the track. After this we rode between olives and vineyards where there were fewer people. There was not a cloud in the sky, so blue overhead and so white above the far hill-tops on the horizon. The wind in the trees rustled gently in friendliness. Solemn, white-faced, broad-horned oxen stared at us sympathetically over the hedges. One young peasant even stopped his cart to say how beautiful he thought it must be to travel in Italy after our fashion. All day we passed gray olive-gardens and green terraced hillsides, narrow Tuscan-walled streams dry at this season, and long rows of slim straight poplars—"white trees," a woman told us was their name. Every here and there was a shrine with lamp burning before the Madonna, or a wayside cross bearing spear and scourge and crown of thorns. Now we rode by the fair river of Arno, where reeds grew tall and close by the water's edge, and where the gray-green mountains rising almost from its banks were barren of all trees save dark stone-pines and towering cypresses, like so many mountains in Raphael's or Perugino's pictures. Now we came to where the plain broadened and the mountains were blue and distant. Mulberries the peasants had stripped of their leaves before their time, but not bare because of the vines festooned about them, broke with their even ranks the monotony of gray and brown ploughed fields. Here on a hill was a white villa or monastery, with long, lofty avenue of cypresses; there, the stanch unshaken walls and gates of castle or fortress, which, however, had long since disappeared. It is true, all these things are to be seen hastily from the windows of the railway train; but it is only by following the windings and straight ways of the road as we did that its beauty can be worthily realized.
Later in the afternoon, with a turn of the road, we came suddenly in view of Capraia, high up above, and far to the other side of the river—so far, indeed, that all detail was lost, and we could only see the outline of its houses and towers and campanile washed into the whitish-blue sky. And all the time we were working just hard enough to feel that joy of mere living which comes with healthy out-of-door exercise, and, I think, with nothing else. Sometimes we rode seeing no one, and hearing no other sound than the low cries of a cricket in the hedge and the loud calls of an unseen ploughman in a neighboring field; then an old woman went by, complimenting us on going so fast without a horse; and then a baker's boy in white shirt and bare legs, carrying a lamb on his shoulders. But then, again, we met wagon after wagon, piled with boxes and baskets, poultry and vegetables, and sleeping men and women, and with lanterns swinging between the wheels—for the next day would be Friday and market-day, and peasants were already on their way to Florence. There were pedlers, too, walking from village to village, selling straw fans and gorgeous handkerchiefs. Would not the Signora have a handkerchief? one asked, showing me the gayest of his stock. For answer I pointed to the bags on the luggage-carrier and the knapsack on J.'s back. "Of course," he said; we already had enough to carry; would the Signora forgive him for troubling her? And with a polite bow he went on his way.
In the Sunlight. Page 18.
We came to several villages and towns—some small, where pots and bowls, fresh from the potter's wheel, were set out to dry; others large, like Lastra, with heavy walls and gates and old archways, and steps leading up to crooked, steep streets, so narrow the sun never shines into them; or like Montelupo, where for a while we sat on the bridge without the farther gate, looking at the houses which climb up the hillside to the cypress-encircled monastery at the top. Women were washing in the stream below, and under the poplars on the bank a priest in black robes and broad-brimmed hat walked with a young lady. But whenever we stopped, children from far and near collected around us. There were little old-fashioned girls, with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in womanly fashion, who kept on plaiting straw, and small boys nursing big babies, their hands and mouths full of bread and grapes. If, however, in their youthful curiosity they pressed upon us too closely, polite men and women, who had also come to look, drove them back with terrible cries of Via, ragazzi! ("Go away, children!") before which they retreated with the same speed with which they had advanced.
Lastra. Page 20.
Just beyond Montelupo, when a tedious up-grade brought us to a broad plateau, a cart suddenly came out a little way in front of us from a side road. A man was driving, and on the seat behind, and facing us, were two nuns, who wore wide straw hats which flapped slowly up and down with the motion of the cart. When they saw us, the younger of the two covered her face with her hands, as if she thought us a device of the Devil. But the other, who looked the Lady Abbess, met the danger bravely, and sternly examined us. This close scrutiny reassured her. When we drew nearer she wished us good-evening, and then her companion turned and looked. We told them we were pilgrims bound for Rome. At this they took courage, and the spokeswoman begged for the babies they cared for in Florence. We gave her a few sous. She counted them quite greedily, and then—but not till then—benevolently blessed us. They were going at jog-trot pace, so that we soon left them behind. "Buon viaggio," the Abbess cried; and the silent sister smiled, showing all her pretty white teeth, for we now represented a temptation overcome.
We put up that night at Empoli. The Albergo Maggiore was fair enough, and, like all large Italian inns, had a clean spacious stable in which to shelter the tricycle. The only drawback to our comfort was the misery at dinner of the black-eyed, blue-shirted waiter at our refusal to eat a dish of birds we had not ordered. He was very eager to dispose of them. He served them with every course, setting them on the table with a triumphant "Ecco!" as if he had prepared a delicious surprise. It was not until he brought our coffee that he despaired. Then he retired mournfully to the kitchen, where his loud talk with the padrona made us fear their wrath would fall upon us or the tricycle. But later they gave us candles, and said good-night with such gracious smiles that we slept the sleep which knows neither care nor fear.
The next morning their temper was as unclouded as the sky. They both watched the loading of the tricycle with smiling interest. He had seen velocipedes with two wheels, the waiter said, but never one with three. And that a Signora should ride, the padrona added, ah! that indeed was strange! Then she grew confidential. Only occasionally I caught her meaning, for my knowledge of Italian was small. She had had seven children, she said, and all were dead but one. And I, had I any? And where had I bought my dress? She liked it so much; and she took it in her hand and felt it. Should we stay long in Italy? and sometime we would come back to Empoli? Her son, a little fellow, was there too. He had been hanging about the machine when we came down to breakfast, and ever since. He stood speechless while J. was by, but when the latter went away for a few minutes—less shy with me, I suppose, because he knew I could not understand him as well—he asked what might such a velocipede cost? as much perhaps as a hundred francs? But J. coming back he was silent as before. They all followed us out to the street, the padrona shaking hands with us both, and the boy standing by the tricycle to the very last.
A Perugino Landscape. Page 24.
It was good to be in the open country again, warming ourselves in the hot sunshine. The second morning of our ride was better than the first. We knew beforehand how beautiful the day would be, and how white and smooth was the road that lay before us. The white oxen behind the ploughs, and the mules in their gay trappings and shining harness seemed like old acquaintances. The pleasant good-morning given us by every peasant we met made us forget we were strangers in the land. A little way from Empoli we crossed the Ponte d'Elsa, and then after a sharp turn to the right we were on the road to "fair and soft Siena." It led on through vineyards and wide fields lying open to the sun, by sloping hillsides and narrow winding rivers, by villas and gardens where roses were blooming. In places they hung over the wall into the road. We asked a little boy to give us one—for the Signora, J. added. But the child shook his head. How could he? The roses were not his, he said. Once we passed a wayside cross on which loving hands had laid a bunch of the fresh blossoms. Sometimes we heard from the far-away mountains the loud blasting of rocks, and then the soft bells of a monastery; sometimes even the cracking of the whip of a peasant behind us, driving an unwilling donkey. Then we would pass from the stillness of the country into the noise and clamor of small villages, to hear the wondering cries of the women to which we were already growing accustomed, the piercing yells of babies, who well secured in basket go-carts could not get to us quickly enough, and the sing-song repetition of older children saying their lesson in school, and whom we could see at their work through the low windows.
About noon we rode into Certaldo—Boccaccio's town. I know nothing that interferes so seriously with hero-worship as hunger. I confess that if some one had said, "You can go either to see Boccaccio's house or to lunch at a trattoria, but both these things you cannot do," our answer would have been an immediate order for lunch. We went at once to a trattoriapadronaEcco