The Historical Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc
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parched and dusty bushes I lay and ate and drank my wine, and smoked, and then all day I slept, and woke a while, and slept again more deeply. But how people sleep and wake, if you do not yet know it after so much of this book you never will.
It was perhaps five o'clock, or rather more, when I rose unhappily and took up the ceaseless road.
Even the goodness of the Italian nature seemed parched up in those dry hollows. At an inn where I ate they shouted at me, thinking in that way to make me understand; and their voices were as harsh as the grating of metal against stone. A mile farther I crossed a lonely line of railway; then my map told me where I was, and I went wearily up an indefinite slope under the declining sun, and thought it outrageous that only when the light had gone was there any tolerable air in this country.
Soon the walls of San Quirico, partly ruinous, stood above the fields (for the smallest places here have walls); as I entered its gate the sun set, and as though the cool, coming suddenly, had a magic in it, everything turned kinder. A church that could wake interest stood at the entry of the town; it had stone lions on its steps, and the pillars were so carved as to resemble knotted ropes. There for the first time I saw in procession one of those confraternities which in Italy bury the dead; they had long and dreadful hoods over their heads, with slits for the eyes. I spoke to the people of San Quirico, and they to me. They were upstanding, and very fine and noble in the lines of the face. On their walls is set a marble tablet, on which it is registered that the people of Tuscany, being asked whether they would have their hereditary Duke or the House of Savoy, voted for the latter by such and such a great majority; and this kind of tablet I afterwards found was common to all these small towns. Then passing down their long street I came, at the farther gate, to a great sight, which the twilight still permitted me to receive in its entirety.
For San Quirico is built on the edge of a kind of swell in the land, and here where I stood one looked over the next great wave; for the shape of the view was, on a vast scale, just what one sees from a lonely boat looking forward over a following sea.
The trough of the wave was a shallow purple valley, its arid quality hidden by the kindly glimmer of evening; few trees stood in it to break its sweep, and its irregularities and mouldings were just those of a sweep of water after a gale. The crest of the wave beyond was seventeen miles away. It had, as have also such crests at sea, one highest, toppling peak in its long line, and this, against the clear sky, one could see to be marked by buildings. These buildings were the ruined castle and walls of Radicofani, and it lay straight on my way to Rome.
It is a strange thing, arresting northern eyes, to see towns thus built on summits up into the sky, and this height seemed the more fantastic because it was framed. A row of cypress trees stood on either side of the road where it fell from San Quirico, and, exactly between these, this high crest, a long way off, was set as though by design.
With more heart in me, and tempted by such an outline as one might be by the prospect of adventure, I set out to cross the great bare run of the valley. As I went, the mountain of Amiato came more and more nearly abreast of me in the west; in its foothills near me were ravines and unexpected rocks; upon one of them hung a village. I watched its church and one tall cypress next it, as they stood black against the last of daylight. Then for miles I went on the dusty way, and crossed by old bridges watercourses in which stood nothing but green pools; and the night deepened.
It was when I had crossed the greater part of the obscure plain, at its lowest dip and not far from the climb up to Radicofani, that I saw lights shining in a large farmhouse, and though it was my business to walk by night, yet I needed companionship, so I went in.
There in a very large room, floored with brick and lit by one candle, were two fine old peasants, with faces like apostles, playing a game of cards. There also was a woman playing with a strong boy child, that could not yet talk: and the child ran up to me. Nothing could persuade the master of the house but that I was a very poor man who needed sleep, and so good and generous was this old man that my protests seemed to him nothing but the excuses and shame of poverty. He asked me where I was going. I said, 'To Rome.' He came out with a lantern to the stable, and showed me there a manger full of hay, indicating that I might sleep in it... His candle flashed upon the great silent oxen standing in rows; their enormous horns, three times the length of what we know in England, filled me with wonder ... Well! (may it count to me as gain!), rather than seem to offend him I lay down in that manger, though I had no more desire to sleep than has the flittermouse in our Sussex gloamings; also I was careful to offer no money, for that is brutality. When he had left me I took the opportunity for a little rest, and lay on my back in the hay wide-awake and staring at darkness.
The great oxen champed and champed their food with a regular sound; I remembered the steerage in a liner, the noise of the sea and the regular screw, for this it exactly resembled. I considered in the darkness the noble aspect of these beasts as I had seen them in the lantern light, and I determined when I got to Rome to buy two such horns, and to bring them to England and have them mounted for drinking horns--great drinking horns, a yard deep--and to get an engraver to engrave a motto for each. On the first I would have--
King Alfred was in Wantage born
He drank out of a ram's horn.
Here is a better man than he,
Who drinks deeper, as you see.
Thus my friends drinking out of it should lift up their hearts and no longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this seemed to suit me--
Salve, cornu cornuum! Cornutorum vis Boûm. Munus excellent Deûm! Gregis o praesidium! Sitis desiderium! Dignum cornuum cornu Romae memor salve tu! Tibi cornuum cornuto--
LECTOR. That means nothing.
AUCTOR. Shut up!
Tibi cornuum cornuto Tibi clamo, te saluto Salve cornu cornuum! Fortunatam da Domunt!
And after this cogitation and musing I got up quietly, so as not to offend the peasant: and I crept out, and so upwards on to the crest of the hill.
But when, after several miles of climbing, I neared the summit, it was already beginning to be light. The bareness and desert grey of the distance I had crossed stood revealed in a colourless dawn, only the Mont' Amiata, now somewhat to the northward, was more gentle, and softened the scene with distant woods. Between it and this height ran a vague river-bed as dry as the stones of a salt beach.
The sun rose as I passed under the ruined walls of the castle. In the little town itself, early as was the hour, many people were stirring. One gave me good-morning--a man of singular character, for here, in the very peep of day, he was sitting on a doorstep, idle, lazy and contented, as though it was full noon. Another was yoking oxen; a third going out singing to work in the fields.
I did not linger in this crow's nest, but going out by the low and aged southern gate, another deeper valley, even drier and more dead than the last, appeared under the rising sun. It was enough to make one despair! And when I thought of the day's sleep in that wilderness, of the next night's toil through it--
LECTOR. What about the Brigand of Radicofani of whom you spoke in Lorraine, and of whom I am waiting to hear?
AUCTOR. What about him? Why, he was captured long ago, and has since died of old age. I am surprised at your interrupting me with such questions. Pray ask for no more tales till we get to the really absorbing story of the Hungry Student.
Well, as I was saying, I was in some despair at the sight of that valley, which had to be crossed before I could reach the town of Acquapendente, or Hanging-water, which I knew to lie somewhere on the hills beyond. The sun was conquering me, and I was looking hopelessly for a place to sleep, when a cart drawn by two oxen at about one mile an hour came creaking by. The driver was asleep, his head on the shady side. The devil tempted me, and without one struggle against temptation, nay with cynical and congratulatory feelings, I jumped up behind, and putting my head also on the shady side (there were soft sacks for a bed) I very soon was pleasantly asleep.