FAIR AND SOFT SIENA.

"He saw a most pleasant mountainouscountry, beautified withwoods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts,flowers also with springs and fountains,very delectable to behold."

Though we left Poggibonsi in the beginning of the morning, a large crowd waited for us at the door of the inn. Thepadronasaid farewell with many good wishes; men and women we had never seen before called out pleasantlyà rivederle, twocarabinieriwatched us from the other side of the piazza, the railroad officials at the station cried "Partenza! Partenza!" and then we were off and out of the town. It would besu,su,su, all the way they told us at the inn, but for several miles we went fast enough, so that I felt sure the peasants we passed were still only calling on the saints. The ascent at first was very gradual,while the road was excellent. There were down as well as up grades, and for every steep climb we had a short coast. Now we came out on villas which but a little before had been above us, and now we reached the very summit of hills from which we looked forth upon mountain rising beyond mountain,—some treeless and ashen gray, others thickly wooded and glowing with golden greens and russets, and still others white and mist-like, and seeming to melt into the soft white clouds resting on their highest peaks. All along, the hedges were covered with clusters of red rose-berries and the orange berries of the pyracanthus. The grass by the roadside was gay with brilliant crimson pinks, yellow snapdragons and dandelions, and violet daisies. Once we came to a vineyard where the ripe fruit still hung in purple clusters from the vines, and where men and women, some on foot and others on ladders, were gathering and filling with them large buckets and baskets. At the far end of the field white oxen, their great heads decorated with red ribbons, stood in waiting. Boys with buckets slung on long poles were comingand going between the vines. In all the other vineyards we had passed the vintage was over, so we waited to watch the peasants as, laughing and singing, they worked away. But when they saw us, they too stopped and looked, and one man came down from his ladder and to the hedge to offer us a bunch of grapes.

On the Arno—near Empoli.Page 36.

The only town through which we rode was Staggia, where workmen were busy restoring the old tower and making it a greater ruin than it had ever been before. One town gate has gone, but from the battlements of the other grass and weeds still wave with the wind, while houses have been built into the broken walls. It is a degenerate little town, and its degeneracy, paradoxical as it may sound, is the result of its activity. For its inhabitants have not rested content like those of Lastra with the mediævalism that surrounds them. They have striven to make what is old new by painting their church and many of their houses in that scene-painting style which to-day seems to represent the art of the people in Italy. Often during our journey we saw specimens of this vile fashion,—houses withsham windows and shutters, churches with make-believe curtains and cords,—but nowhere was it so prominent as in Staggia.

Beyond Monteriggione, whose towers alone showed above its high walls, the road began to wind upward on the mountain-side. It was such a long, steady pull that although the surface was perfect we gave up riding and walked. Our machine was heavily loaded, and not too easy to work over prolonged up-grades. Besides, we were not time nor record makers, nor perambulating advertisements, and we had the day before us. We were now closed in with woods. On either side were chestnuts and dwarf-oaks and bushes, their leaves all "yellow and black and pale and hectic red." And occasional openings showed near mountain-tops covered with downy gray grass and a low growth like heather, and here and there were groups of dark pines. For an hour at least we were alone with the sounds and silence of the mountains. The wandering wind whispered in the wood and black swine rooted in the fallen leaves, but of human life there was no sign. Then there came from afar a regulartap-tap, low at first, but growing louder and louder, until, as we drew closer to it, we knew it to be the steady hammering of stone-breakers. There were two men at work in this lonely pass, and as we stood talking to them two more came from under the chestnuts. These had guns on their shoulders, and wore high boots and the high-crowned conventional brigand hats. Ever since we left Florence we had seen at intervals in the fields and woods a notice with the words, "È vietata la bandita," which we interpreted as a warning against the bandits or convicts for whom our Florentine friends had prepared us. And now we seemed to have come face to face with two of these brigands. But it turned out that there was little of the bandit about them save their appearance. Their guns were for birds, and later on we learned that the alarming signs were merely to forbid the trespassing of these very gentlemen.

A Slight Obstruction.

A mile or two farther on, the road began to go down again. We were both glad to be on the machine after our walk. We could see to the bottom of the hill, and there was no one in sight. J. let go the brake. None but cyclersknow the delight of a five-minutes coast after hours of up-hill toiling. They, however, will sympathize with our pleasure in the mountains near Siena. But when it was at its fullest, and the machine was going at the rate of about twenty miles an hour, and neither brake nor back-pedalling could bring it to a sudden halt, a man (or the foul fiend himself) drove a flock of sheep out from the woods a few feet in front of us. When we reached them only the first had crossed the road; of course, all the rest had to follow. They tried to go on right through the wheels, but only succeeded in getting under them, setting the machine to pitching like a ship in a heavy sea. But I held on fast; J. stood on the pedals and screwed the brake down; the little wheel scattered the sheep like the cow-catcher of an engine, and we brought up in the gutter. Before we stopped, J. began a moral lecture to the shepherd, and was showing him how, if the machine had gone over, the consequences would have been worse for us than for his flock. The lecture ended ratherimmorally withaccidente voi, andimbecile, the deadliest of all Italian maledictions,punishable in places by imprisonment. The shepherd looked as if he was ready to curse us in return, but before he had time we were out of hearing, though we first made sure that no sheep were injured. We were none the worse for the accident, and the tricycle was unhurt, save for a deep dent in the dress guard.

The rest of our way was divided between walking and riding. The woods with their solitude and wildness, but not the good road, came to an end. Once beyond them, we wheeled out by fields where men and women were at work, their oxen whiter than any we had yet seen, by contrast with the rich red of the upturned earth. In olive-gardens peasants were eating their midday meal; men with white aprons, women with enormous Sienese hats, and dogs and oxen were all resting sociably together. By the roadside others were making rope, the men twisting and forever walking backwards, a small boy always turning at the wheel. Scattered on the hill-tops and by the road were large red-brick farm-houses, instead of the white ones we had seen near Florence.

Noontime.Page 42.

At one, where there was a well on the other side of the wall, we asked for a glass of water. A man brought it to the gate, where he was joined by three or four others. They stared inquiringly at the tricycle, at the bags, and at us, while J. squeezed lemon-juice into the water. Then one opened his mouth very wide and pointed to his teeth: "The little sir," he asked, "is he a dentist?"

It was noon when we first saw Siena, and we were then at the very walls. In the old days it was always said, "More than her gates, Siena opens her heart to you!" But the heart of him who sat in office by the city gate was shut against us. When we rode past him he bade us descend. To our "Perchè?" he said it was the law. Oh the vanity of these Sienese! Through the streets of Florence and over the crowded Ponte Vecchio we had ridden undisturbed; but in this mountain town, which boasts of but two hacks, and where donkeys and oxen are the only beasts to be frightened, we were forced to get down. The dignity of the law-makers of the city must be respected. So we twoweary pilgrims had to walk along the narrow streets, between the tall palaces, while tanners in red caps, and women in flowered, white-ribbonedfestahats, and priests and soldiers stared, and one man, with a long push-cart, kept close to us like an evil genius in a dream. He was now on one side, and now on the other, examining the wheels, asking endless questions, and always getting in the way. At all the street corners he hurried on before, and with loud shouts called the people to come and see. Then he was at our heels again, shrieking his loud, shrill trade-cry into our very ears. J. as a rule is not ill-tempered; but there is a limit to all things. The stupid sheep, the watchful guard, and now this plague of a flower-pedler brought his patience to an end, and on our way through the town he said much in good plain English which it was well the citizens could not understand.

"For there where I go is enoughand to spare.""Read it so, if you will, in myBook."

"For there where I go is enoughand to spare."

"Read it so, if you will, in myBook."

Even pilgrims of old on their way to Rome sometimes tarried in castle or village. We could not pass through Siena, discourteous though her first welcome had been, as we had through smaller and less fair towns. So for a day or two we put away our tricycle and the "cockle-shells and sandal shoon" of our pilgrimage. We went to apension, one at which J. had stayed before, and which he liked. I admit it was better in many ways than the inns in which hitherto we had slept and eaten. There was carpet on the floor of our room, and in it easy-chairs and a lounge. There were elaborate breakfasts at one, and still more elaborate dinnersat six, and there was always a great plenty,—as the Englishwoman who sat next me, and who I fear had not always fared so well, said when she urged me to eat and drink more of the fruit and wine set before me. "You can have all you want in this house," she finished with a sigh, as if her crown of sorrow was in remembering unhappier things. But we both thought regretfully of the dining-rooms with the bad prints on the walls, and the more modest dinners of our own ordering. I think too we had found more pleasure in the half-understood talk ofpadroniand waiters than we did now in the elegant and learned conversation of our fellow-boarders, for they were all, it seemed, persons of learning and refinement. There was the retired English major-general who sat opposite and who had written a book, as he very soon let us know. He recognized us as Americans before we opened our mouths to speak, which fact he also let us know by his reminiscences, addressed not to us but to our neighbors. He had travelled in Spain with Mr. Fillmore, the ex-President, "the most courteous of gentlemen;"he said he well knew Mr. Marion Crawford, the talented novelist, and his uncle, "dear old Sam Ward;" he had counted among his best friendsBayard Taylor, "as you remember I have said in my book." This same book which made the major so communicative appeared to have crushed the spirit out of his wife; she sat silent during dinner, fortifying herself at intervals with weak whiskey and water.

Then there was the elderly English lady travelling abroad with her daughter "who has just taken up architecture;" she informed us, "she has always painted heads till now, but she is fascinated by her architectural work. Then I, you know, amsofond of water-colors." And there was the Swedish lady, who could talk all languages, speaking to us in something supposed to be English, and who was as eager in her pursuit of food for the body as for the mind. I count the way in which she greedily swallowed thevino santoin her glass, when our host passed round the table the second time with his precious bottle, one of the wonders of our visit to Siena. It was pathetictoo to see her disappointment when he turned away, just before he reached her, his bottle empty. And there were still others who knew much about pictures and palaces, statues and studios, and no doubt we might greatly have profited thereby.

But we liked it better upstairs, where we were alone and there was less culture. Our window overlooked a high terrace in which marigolds and many-colored chrysanthemums were blooming, the gardens of the Piccolomini Palace full of broad-leaved fig-trees and pale olives, and the wide waste of mountain and moorland stretching from the red city walls to the high, snow-capped Apennines on the horizon. All the morning the sun shone in our windows, and every hour and even oftener we heard the church bells, and the loud, clear bugle-calls from the barracks, once a monastery, whose mass of red and gray walls rose from the near olives. They say it snows in Siena in the winter-time, and that it is cold and bleak and dreary; but I shall always think of it as a place of flowers and sunshine and sweet sounds.

But best of all were the hours when we wandered through the town, up and down dark alley-ways and flights of steps, under brick arches, along precipitate narrow streets where we had to press close to the houses, or retreat into an open door, to let the wide-horned oxen pass by with their load; now coming out at the very foot of La Mangia, on the broad, sunny piazza; now by the tanneries where little streams of brown water trickled down towards the washing-place at the foot of the hill, and where the walls were hung with dripping brown skins, probably just as they were when the little Catherine—her visions already beginning—and Stefano walked by them and towards home in the fading evening light, from a visit to the older and married sister Bonaventura. One hour we were with the past in the shadowy aisles of the Duomo, where Moses and Trismegistus, Solomon and Socrates, Sibyls and Angels looked up at us from the pavement, and rows of popes kept watch from above the tall black and white pillars, while in the choir beyond priests chanted their solemn psalms. Next we were with the present in thegay Lizza, under the acacias and yellow chestnuts, by flower-beds full of roses and scarlet sage, and walls now covered with brilliant Virginia creepers; and out on the fort above to see a golden sky, and the sun disappearing behind banks of purple, golden-edged, and red clouds, and pale, misty hills, and to look back across the hollow to the red town climbing up from low olive-gardens towards the Duomo on its hill-top, and tall La Mangia towering aloft from its own little hollow beyond. From every side came the voices of many people,—of soldiers in the barracks, of women and children under the trees, of ball-players in the old court below, and of applauding lookers-on lounging on the marble benches.

By the River.Page 50.

The tall unfinished arch of the Duomo that rises above houses and churches, and indeed above everything but the lofty La Mangia and the Campanile, tells the story of greatness and power and wealth suddenly checked. But the deadly plague, which carried off so many citizens that not even enough were left to make their city beautiful as they meant it should be, could not take away the great beauty it alreadyhad, nor kill the joyousness of its people. There are no Spendthrift Clubs in Siena now, nor any gay Lanos like him Dante met in theInferno. But there are still laughter and song loving Sienese who in their own simple fashion go through life gathering rosebuds while they may. It seemed to me a very pretty fashion when I saw them holiday-making on Sunday afternoon, peasants, priests, officers, townspeople, all out in their Sunday best, and when on the Via Cavour, near theLoggia, we met two wandering minstrels singing love-songs through the town. One played on a mandolin which hung from his neck by a wide red ribbon, and as he played he sang. His voice was loud and strong and very sweet, and like another Orpheus he drew after him all who heard his music. His companion sold copies of the song, printed on pink paper, gay as the words. He went bowing and smiling in and out of the crowd,—from the women whose broad hats waved as they kept time to the singing, to the men who had stuck feathers in their soft felts worn jauntily on one side; from demure little girls holding their nurses'hands, to swaggering soldiers. Then when the first singer rested he, in his turn, sang a verse. There was with them a small boy who every now and then broke in in a high treble, so that there was no pause in the singing.

Wherever we went that afternoon, whether by the Duomo or out by the Porta Romana, on the Lizza or near San Domenico, we saw large written posters, announcing that at six in the evening there would be, at No. 17 Via Ricasoli, a great marionette performance of thePonte dei Sospiri. Apparently this was to be the event of the day, and to it we determined to go. When a little before the appointed hour we came to the Via Ricasoli, we half expected to see a theatre ablaze with light. What we did find after much difficulty was a low doorway on the ground floor of a many-storied palace, and before it a woman by a table, lighting a very small lamp, to the evident satisfaction of half a dozen youngsters. Over the open doorway was a chintz curtain; behind it, darkness. This was not encouraging. But presently a woman with a child came to buy tickets. One of the groups of youthfuladmirers was then sent up and a second down the street, and after they had come back with mysterious bundles another lamp was produced, lit, and carried inside, and the first two of the audience followed. It was now five minutes of six, so we also bought our tickets, threesoldi, or cents, for each, and the curtain was drawn for us.

A low crypt-like room with vaulted ceiling; at one end two screens covered with white sheets; between them a stage somewhat larger than that of a street Punch, with a curtain representing a characteristic Sienese brick wall enclosing a fountain; several rows of rough wooden benches, and one of chairs,—this was what we saw by the dim light of one lamp. We sat on the last bench. The audience probably would be more entertaining than the play. But the humble shall be exalted. The woman on the front row bade us come up higher. The small boy who acted as usher told us we might have two of the chairs for twosoldimore. The ticket-seller even came in, and in soft pleading tones said that we might have any places we wanted; why thenshould we choose the worst? But we refused the exaltation.

The audience now began to arrive in good earnest. Five ragged boys of thegaminspecies, one of a neater order with his little sister by the hand, two soldiers, a lady with a blue feather in her bonnet, and her child and nurse, two young girls,—and the benches were almost filled. Our friend the ticket-seller became very active as business grew brisk. She was always running in and out, now giving this one a seat, now rearranging the reserved chairs, and now keeping the younger members of the audience in order.Ragazzini, she called the unruly boys who stood up on the benches and whistled and sang, so that I wondered what diminutive she gave the swells on the front row. This was amusing enough, but our dinner-hour was half-past six. J. looked at his watch; it was a quarter past. The ever-watchful keeper of the show saw him. "Ah, theSignoremust not be impatient.Ecco!the music was about to begin." Begin it did indeed, to be continued with a persistency which made us fear it would never end. Themusicians were two. A young man in velveteen coat and long yellow necktie played the clarionet, and another the cornet. They knew only one tune,—a waltz I think it was meant to be,—but that they gave without stint, playing it over and over again, even while the ticket-seller made them move from their chairs to a long, high box by the wall; and when a third arrived with a trombone they let him join in when and as it best pleased him. When we had heard at least the twenty-fifth repetition of the waltz, had looked at the scuffling of theragazziniuntil even that pleasure palled, had seen the soldiers smokesigaro Cavouraftersigaro Cavourso that the air grew heavy, and had watched the gradual growth of the audience until every place was filled, our patience was exhausted. Behold! we said to the woman with the gentle voice, it was now seven. The play was announced for six. Was this right? In a house not far off every one was eating, and two covers were laid for us. But here we were in this dark room in our hunger, waiting for marionettes whose wires for aught we knew were broken.She became penitent. Thesignorinimust forgive her. The wires were not broken, but he who pulled them had not arrived. There was yet time. Would we not go and dine and then come back? She would admit us on our return.

And so we went and had our dinner, well seasoned with polite conversation. The ticket-agent was true to her word. When we reappeared at her door, the curtain was pulled at once. In the mean time the musicians had been suppressed, not only out of hearing but out of sight. The room was so crowded that many who had arrived during our absence were standing. Indeed, there must have been by this time fully five francs in the house. All were watching with entranced eyes the movements of four or five puppets. The scene represented an interior, which I suppose, was that of the prison to one side of the Bridge of Sighs. That it was intended for a cell also seemed evident, because the one portable piece of furniture on the stage was a low, flat couch of a shape which as every one who has been to the theatre, but never to prison, knows ispeculiar to the latter. It was impossible to lose sight of it, as thedramatis personæmade their exits and entrances over it. It was rather funny to see the villain of the piece after an outbreak of passion, or an elegant long-haired page in crimson clad, after a gentlemanly speech, suddenly vault over it. We could not discover what the play was about. Besides the two above-mentioned characters there was a puppet with a large red face and green coat and trousers who gave moral tone to the dialogue, and another with heavy black beard and turban-like head-dress, and much velvet and lace whom we took to be a person of rank. As they came in and out by turn, it was impossible to decide which was the prisoner. With the exception of the jumps over the couch, there was little action in the performance. Its only two noticeable features were—first, the fact that villain, page, moralist, and magnate spoke in exactly the same voice and with the same expression; and, secondly, that they had an irrepressible tendency to stand in the air rather than on the floor, as if they had borrowed Mr. Stockton's negative-gravitymachine. The applause and laughter and rapt attention of the audience proved the play to be much to their liking. But for us inappreciative foreigners a little of it went a great way. As nothing but talk came of all the villany and moralizing and grandeur and prettiness,—which may have been a clever bit of realism of which the English drama is not yet capable,—and as there was no apparent reason why the dialogue should ever come to an end, we went away after the next act. The ticket-seller was surprised at our sudden change from eagerness to indifference, but not offended. She thanked us for our patronage and wished us afelice notte.

With the darkness the gayety of the town had increased. In the large theatre a play was being performed by a company of amateurs. Having had tickets given us, we looked in for a few minutes, but found it as wordy as that of the puppets. In a neighboring piazza the proprietor of a large van, like those to be seen at country fairs at home, was exhibiting a man, arrayed in a suit of rubber, with a large brass helmet-like arrangement on his head, who, itseemed, could live at the bottom of the sea, along with Neptune and the Naiads, as comfortably as on dry shore.Ecco!There was the tank within, where this marvel could be seen,—a human being living under the water and none the worse for it! Admission was foursoldi, butper militari e ragazzi("for the military and children") it was but two! So it seems that the soldiers who abroad are to strike terror into the enemy, at home are ranked with the young of the land, since like them their name is legion! There were about a dozen in the crowd, and, all unconscious of the sarcasm, they hurried up the steps and into the show, while an old man ground out of a hand-organ the appropriate tune of "O, que j'aime les militaires!"

But dramas and shows were not the only Sunday-evening amusements. Thecaffèswere crowded. Judging from the glimpses we had into little black, cavern-like wine-shops, another Saint Bernardino is needed to set makers of gaming-tools in Siena to the manufacture of holier articles. And more than once, as we walked homewards in the starlight, weheard the voices of the three minstrels singing of human passion in the streets where Catherine so often preached the rapture of divine love. If swans were now seen in visions by fond Sienese matrons, they would wing their way earthward and not heavenward, as in the days when Blessed Bernardo's mother dreamed dreams.

"And the name of the going upthe side of the hill is called Difficulty.""Is not the place dangerous?Hath it not hindered many in theirpilgrimage?"

"And the name of the going upthe side of the hill is called Difficulty."

"Is not the place dangerous?Hath it not hindered many in theirpilgrimage?"

We left Siena the morning after the marionette exhibition. The major, when he heard at breakfast that we were going, asked us point blank several questions about Boston publishers, his book probably being still uppermost in his thoughts. Later he sent his card to our room to know at what hour we started; he wished to see us off. The young lady of architectural proclivities shook hands and bade us good-by, saying she had often ridden a sociable with her cousin in England.

After all, there was not much for the major to see. We could not ride through the streets, and so could not mount the machine for hisbenefit. But he was interested in watching us strap the bags to the luggage-carrier, and pleased because of this opportunity to entertain us with more American reminiscences. I am afraid his amusement in Siena was small. In return for the little we gave him he asked us to come and see him in Rome, where he would spend the winter, and added that if we expected to pass through Cortona he would like to write a card of introduction for us to a friend of his there, an Italian who had married an English lady. Cortona was a rough place, and we might be glad to have it. He had forgotten his friend's name, but he would run upstairs and his wife could tell him. In a minute he returned with the written card. We have had many letters of introduction, but never one as singular as the major-general's. As he knew our names even less well than that of his Cortona friends, he introduced us as "an American lady and gentleman riding abicycle!" Only fancy! as the English say. Our parting with him was friendly. Then he stood with Luigi and Zara until we disappeared around the corner of the street.

What a ride we had from Siena to Buonconvento! This time the road was allgiù,giù,giù. It was one long coast almost all the way, and we made the most of it. We flew by milestone after milestone. Once we timed ourselves: we made a mile in four minutes. The country through which we rode was sad and desolate. On either side were low rolling hills, bare as the English moors, and of every shade of gray and brown and purple. Here rose a hill steeper than the others, with a black cross on its summit; and here, one crowned with a group of four grim cypresses. Down the hillsides were deep ruts and gullies, with only an occasional patch of green, where women were watching sheep and swine. Once we came to where three or four houses were gathered around a small church, but they were as desolate as the land. We heard voices in the distance, but there was no one in sight. When on a short stretch of level road we stopped to look at this strange gray land, the grayer because dark clouds covered the sky, we saw that above the barrenness the sun shone on Siena, and that all her houses, overtowered by thegraceful La Mangia and the tall Duomo Campanile, glistened in the bright light.

About five miles from the city the desolation was somewhat relieved, for there were hedges by the roadside, and beyond sloping olive-gardens and vineyards. Poplars grew by little streams and sometimes we rode under oaks. On the top of every gray hill, giving it color, was a farm-house, rows of brilliant pumpkins laid on its red walls, ears of yellow corn hung in itsloggia, and gigantic haystacks standing close by. There were monasteries too, great square brick buildings with tall towers, and below spire-like cypresses. But between the farms and fertile fields were deep ravines and dry beds of streams. The road was lonely. Now and then flocks of birds flew down in front of the tricycle, or large white geese came out from under the hedge and hissed at us. For a few minutes a man driving a donkey-cart made the way not a little lively. He did not see us until we wheeled by him. Then he jumped as if he had been shot. "Dio!" he exclaimed, "but you frightened me!" He laughed, however, and whipping up his donkeyrattled after us as if eager for a race, talking and shouting all the while until we were out of hearing. One or two peasants passed in straw chariot-shaped wagons, and once from a farm-house a woman in red blouse and yellow apron, with a basket on her head and a dog at her heels, came towards us. It was in this same farm-house we met a Didymus. We stopped, as we had a way of doing when anything pleased us, and he came out to have a better look at thetramway. And how far did we expect to go to-day? he asked. To Monte Oliveto, we told him, for, like pious pilgrims, we thought to make a day's retreat with the monks there. "To Monte Oliveto! and in a day, and on that machine!" and he laughed us to scorn. "In a week, theSignorehad better say." Later a stone-breaker's belief in us made some amends for the farmer's contempt. We were riding then. "Addio!" he cried, even before we reached him.

I shall always remember a little village through which we rode that morning, because it was there we saw the first large stone-pine growing by the roadside, which showed wewere getting farther south, and because of the friendliness of a peasant. It was a poor place. The people were ragged and squalid and sickly, as if the gloom of the hills had fallen upon them. We asked at a shop for a lemon, but there was not one to be had. "Wait," cried a woman standing close by, and she disappeared. She returned almost immediately with a lemon on whose stem there were still fresh green leaves. "Ecco!" she said, "it is from my garden." "How much?" asked J., as she handed it to him. "Oh, nothing, sir," and she put her hands behind her back. We made her take a few coppers, for the children we told her. As far as it lay in her power I think she was as courteous as those men in a certain Italian town who, in days long past, fought together for the stranger who came within their gates, so eager were they all, not to cheat him, as is the way with modern landlords, but to lodge him at their own expense, so that there were no inns in that town.

Before we reached Buonconvento the sun came out and the clouds rolled away. It had rained here earlier in the morning. The roadswere sticky and the machine ran heavily, and trees and hedges were wet with sparkling raindrops. There is an imposing entrance to the little town, a pointed bridge over a narrow stream, with a Madonna and Child in marble relief at the highest point, an avenue of tall poplars with marble benches set between, and then the heavy brick walls blackened with age, and the gateway, its high Gothic arch decorated with the old Sienese wolf and a more recent crop of weeds.

We rode from one end to the other,—a two minutes' ride,—without finding atrattoria. At length we appealed to the crowd. Where was thetrattoria? No one understood; and yet that very morning J. had been asked if he were not a Florentine! Perhapsmonsieurspeaks French? and a little Frenchman in seedy clothes jauntily worn, and with an indescribable swagger, came forward, hat in hand. The effect of his coming was magical. For unknown reasons, when it was found that J. could speak French after a fashion, his Italian was all-sufficient. The inn was here; we were directly in front of it, and thepadrone,who had been at our elbows all the time, led the way into it. The Frenchman gallantly saw us through the crowd to the room where we were to dine. It was the besttrattoriain the place, but poor enough, he said. Such bread and cheese! horrible! and he shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to heaven in testimony thereof. He did not live in Buonconvento, not he. He came from Paris. Then he complimented J. on his Italian, to make up in some measure for the failure of the people to appreciate it, and with a bow that might have won him favor at court, and a "I salute you,monsieurandmadame," he politely left us before our dinner was served. He was a strolling actor, thepadronesaid; he and his troupe would give a performance in the evening.

Chiusure.Page 68.

The fact that we were going to Monte Oliveto annoyed thepadrone. The monastery is a too successful rival to his inn. Few travellers, except those who are on their way to Monte Oliveto, pass through his town, and few who can help it stay there over night. His list of the evils we should have to endurewas the sauce with which he served our beefsteak and potatoes. We must leave the post road for one that was stony and steep. Our velocipede could not be worked over it. It would take hours to reach the monastery, and we had better not be out after dark, for there were dangers untold by the way. But when he had said the worst he became cheerful, and even seemed pleased when we admired his kitchen, where brass and copper pots and pans hung on the walls, and where in one corner was a large fireplace with comfortable seats above and a pigeon-house underneath. But when we complimented him on the walls of his town, Bah! he exclaimed, of what use were they? They were half destroyed. They would be no defence in war-times.

He was right. The walls, strong by the gate, have in parts entirely disappeared, and in others, houses and stables have been made of them. It is on the open space by these houses that the men have their playground. They were all there when we arrived, and still there when we left. Young men, others old enough to be their fathers, and boys were, eachin turn, holding up balls to their noses, and then, with a long slide and backward twist of the arm, rolling them along the ground, which is the way Italians play bowls.

Before the afternoon was over we cursed in our hearts the Tuscan politeness we had heretofore praised. About a mile from Buonconvento the road to Monte Oliveto divided. We turned to the right. But two peasants with ox-teams called out from below that we must not go that way. It was all bad. But to the left it was good, andpiano, ascending but gently, and we had much better take it. In an evil moment we did. That it ill behooves a wise man to seek counsel in every word spoken to him, we found to our cost. In the first place the ascent was not gentle,—we had not then learned that an Italian calls every hill that is not as straight up and down as the side of a house,piano,—and in the second place the road was not good, but vilely bad. Unfortunately, for half a mile or perhaps more it was fair enough. But when we had gone just so far that we were unwilling to turn back we discovered our mistake. The road we hadnot taken was that built by the monks hundreds of years ago; we had chosen the new and not yet finished by-way. It was heavy with dust and dirt, and full of ruts and loose stones. Over it we could not ride or even push the tricycle without difficulty. It was in keeping, however, with the abomination of desolation lying to each side. For we were now in a veritable wilderness, a land of deserts and of pits, where few men dwell. All around us were naked, colorless chalk-hills, abrupt precipices and ravines. A few chestnut-trees, a rose-bush covered with red berries growing from the gray earth, were the only green things we passed for miles. It was weary and slow work, and the sun was low on the hill-tops before we came to the point where the two roads met. At some distance above us we saw a large red building surrounded by cypresses, and we knew this must be Monte Oliveto Maggiore. So we took heart again.

But our trouble was not over. The road was better only by comparison, and it was still impossible to ride, and hard work to push or pull the tricycle. It was built of bricks, whichlay as if they had been carelessly shot out of a cart and left where and how they fell. A little farther on it divided again. A woman was walking towards us, and J. asked her which was the road to the convent (il convento). "You must go back," she said; "it lies miles below,—Buonconvento." "These peasants are fools," said J. in angry English to her very face; but she, all unconscious, smiled upon us. We went to the left, which fortunately was just what we ought to have done. But it was provoking that instead of getting nearer to the monastery, we seemed to be going farther from it. With one turn of the road it appeared to be above, and with the next below us. Now it was on one side and now on the other, until I began to feel as if we were the answer to the riddle I had so often been asked in my childhood, the mysterious "What is it that goes round and round the house and never gets in?" Soon the sun set behind the hills, and the sky grew soft and golden. We met several peasants bearing large bundles of twigs on their heads. There were one or two shrines, a chapel, and a farm-house in front of which apriest stood talking to a woman. But on we went without resting, J. pushing the machine and I walking behind, womanlike shirking my share of the work. The road grew worse until it became nothing but a mass of ruts and gullies washed out by the rain, and led to a hill from which even Christian would have turned and fled. But we struggled up, reaching the top to see the gate of the monastery some sixty or seventy feet below. Finally we came to the great brick gateway which in the dull light—for by this time the color had faded from the sky—rose before us a heavy black pile, beyond whose archway we saw only shadow and mystery. As we walked under it our voices, when we spoke, sounded unnatural and hollow. On the other side the road wound through a gloomy grove of cypresses, growing so close together that they hedged us about with impenetrable darkness. Once several silent figures, moving noiselessly, passed by. Had we, by mischance, wandered into a Valley of the Shadow of Death?

The cypress grove, after several windings, brought us face to face with the building atwhich we had already so often looked from the distance. Even in the semi-darkness we could see the outline distinctly enough to know we were standing in front of the church, and that the detached building a little to our left was a barn or stable. But not a light shone in a window, not a doorway was in sight. I recalled my convent experience of bygone years, and remembered that after eight o'clock in the evening no one was admitted within its walls. Was there a rule like this at Monte Oliveto, and was six the hour when its bolts and bars were fastened against the stranger? As we hesitated where to go or what to do next, three or four workmen came from the stable. J. spoke to them, and one offered to show him the entrance to the monastery while I waited by the tricycle. It was strange to stand in the late evening and in the wilderness alone, with men whose speech I barely understood and whose faces I could not see. For fully five minutes I waited thus while they talked together in low voices. But at last I heard one cry,Ecco!here was thepadrone; and they all took off their hats. A dog ran up andexamined me, and then a man, who I could just make out in the gloom, wore a cassock and the broad-brimmed priestly hat, joined the group. "Buona sera," he said to me.

Could I speak to him in French, I asked. Yes, he assented, what was it I wanted? When I told him we wished to stay in the monastery, he said he had not expected us. We had not written.

"But," I exclaimed, "we thought strangers were allowed to stay here."

"Yes," he answered; "there is apensionin the monastery, but it is for artists."

"And my husband is an artist," I interrupted eagerly, for from his manner I feared he would refuse us admission. After all, what did he know about us except that, vagrant-like, we were wandering in the mountains at a most unseasonable hour? Indeed, when later I reflected on the situation, I realized that we must have seemed suspicious characters. At this critical moment J. returned. His guide had led him to a small side-door beyond the church. There he rang and rang again. The bell was loud and clear, and roused manyechoes within, but nothing else. The guide, perplexed, then led him back. I told him with whom I was speaking, and he continued the conversation with thepadrone. Had they talked in Italian only, or in French, they might have understood each other; but instead they used a strange mixture of the two, to their mutual bewilderment. If this kept on much longer we should undoubtedly spend the night in the open air. In despair I broke in in French: "But, my father, cannot we stay this one night?"

"Certainly," he said, fortunately dropping all Italian. "That is what I was explaining tomonsieur. You can stay, but of course we have nothing prepared. We will do our best."

If he had said he would do his worst, provided we were rid of the tricycle for the night, and were ourselves taken indoors where we might sit down, we should have been thankful.

The bags were unstrapped and given into the care of one of the men, a place was made for the machine in the stable, and then we followed thepadroneorAbate—for this was his real title—to the door where J. had rungin vain, and which he opened with his key. Within it was so dark that we groped our way through a hall and a small cloister. Then we came to a flight of steps, where at the bidding of theAbate, as if to reassure us that we were not being led to secret cells or torture-chambers, the man carrying our bags struck a solitary match. By this feeble light we walked up the broad stone stairs and through many passage-ways, not a sound breaking the stillness but our foot-falls and their loud echoes, to a door where theAbateleft us, and at the same time the match burnt out. But the next minute he reappeared with a lighted taper, and at the end of the hall opened another door, lit a lamp on a table within, and showed us four rooms, which he said were at our disposal. The beds were not made, but they would be attended to immediately. He had now to say Office, but at nine supper would be served. Here was a very comfortable solution to the mystery into which the massive gateway seemed to lead. The Valley of the Shadow of Death had turned out to be a Delectable Land!

It was still more comfortable later, when, his Office said, theAbatecame back and sat and talked with us. Now he could examine us by a better light I think he concluded we were not dangerous characters, probably only harmless lunatics. However that may be, after half an hour, when the supper-bell rang and we started off for the refectory, again by the light of his taper, we were the best of friends. The long corridor, thus dimly seen, seemed interminable. We went down one stairway to find the door locked against us, then up and down another. Here the light went out, leaving us in a darkness like unto that of Egypt. TheAbatelaughed as if it were the best of jokes. He took J.'s hand and J. took mine, and thus like three children we went laughing down the stairway and along more passages, and at last into a long refectory, at the farther end of which was a lamp, while a door to one side of that by which we entered opened, and a second monk in white robes, holding a lighted taper, came in, and when he saw us made a low bow. As there were no other visitors, we were to eat with him and his brother monk, theAbatesaid; and then he gave me the head of the table, asking me if I were willing to be the Lady Abbess.

If we had been two prodigals he could not have been kinder than he was now he had given us shelter. If we had been starving like the hero of the parable, he could not have been more anxious to set before us a feast of plenty. Nor would any fatted calf have been more to our taste than the substantial supper prepared for us. We must eat, he said; we needed it. He had seen us coming up the hill as he talked with a peasant by the roadside; butmonsieurwas push-pushing the velocipede and looking at nothing else, andmadamewas panting and swinging her arms, staring straight in front of her, and before he had time, we had passed. We must drink too; the wine was good for us. We must not mix water with it; it was Christian, why then should it be baptized? The white-robed brother spoke little, but he never allowed J.'s plate to remain empty. When the meat was brought in we were joined by Pirro, a good-sized dog with no tail to speak of, and Lupo, an unusually large cat, and hisnumerous family, who all had to be fed at intervals. But even while Pirro jumped nimbly into the air after pieces of bread thrown to him, and Lupo scratched, and his progeny made mournful appeals to be remembered, and we talked, I looked every now and then down the long narrow table to where it was lost in deep shadow. The cloth was laid its entire length, as if in readiness for the banished brothers whenever they might return. I should not have been surprised then to see the door open to admit a procession of white-robed monks, all with tapers in their hands.

TheAbatemust have realized that to a stranger there was something uncanny in his dark, silent, deserted monastery, and his last word as he bade us good-night was, that we were to fear nothing, and sleep in peace.

THE ABATE DI NEGRO,

Of Monte Oliveto Maggiore,

We would say a Word of Thanks for the Golden Days

passed in his House Beautiful,

and for

The Great Kindnesses shown us in our farther

Journeying.

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