IN THE LAND OF BRIGANDS.
"But by this place Christian went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered."
There was a great festa that day, and all along the street and out on the country road we met men and women in holiday dress carrying baskets and bunches and wreaths of pink chrysanthemums. In Narni, on the heights which Martial called inaccessible, men were lounging in the piazza or playing cards in the caffè. For the shepherds alone there was no rest from every-day work. Before we reached even Narni, but ten miles across the valley from Terni, we saw several driving their sheep and goats into the broad meadows. They wore goat-skin breeches, and by that sign alone we should have known we were nearing Rome. We lunched at Narni on coffee and cakes, for it was the last town through which we should pass on that day's ride. It was here that Quintus, in its Roman prosperity, stayed so long that Martial reproached him for his wearisome delay. Could he come to it now, I doubt if his friend would have the same reason for complaint. It did not seem an attractive place, and when we asked a man about the country beyond, he said it was "bruto." We did not learn till afterwards that this applied to the people, and not to the country, and that here we ought to have been briganded.
We were now high up on the mountain,—on one side steep rocks, on the other a deep precipice. Far below in a narrow valley ran the little river Nar, and on the bank above it the railroad. It was not an easy road to travel, and often the hills were too steep to coast or to climb. The few farm-houses by the way were closed, for the peasants had gone to church. We saw an occasional little gray town crowning the top of sheer gray cliffs, like those in Albert Dürer's pictures, or an old castle either deserted or else with farm-house built in its ruins, where peasants leaned over the battlemented walls. But the only villages through which we rode were Otricoli, just before we descended to the valley of the Tiber, where we created so great a sensation that an old woman selling chestnuts—cooked, I think, by a previous generation—was at first too frightened to wait on us, and Borghetto, on the other side of the valley, where we saw in the piazza the stage from Cività Castellana, in which town we were to spend the night.
There were a few people abroad. In the loneliest part of the mountain an old man in a donkey-cart kept in front of us on a long upgrade. Interested in the tricycle, he forgot the donkey, which gave up a straight for a spiral course, and monopolized the road. J. angrily asked its driver which side he meant to take. But the old man heaped coals of fire on his head by offering to carry us up in his wagon. After we left him far behind, we passed two travellers resting by the wayside. Their bags lay on the ground, and they looked weary and worn. They gave us good-day, and where we were going they of course wanted to know. They too were bound for Rome, it turned out, and had come from Bologna. After the two gentlemen of Bologna, we overtook a group of merry peasants, coats slung over their shoulders for no possible reason but the sake of picturesqueness, and hats adorned with gay pompons of colored paper and tinsel. One carried branches of green leaves and red fruit like cherries, and as we went by he gave us a branch and wished us a good journey. Next went by an old woman, who said with a smile that we could go without horse or donkey,—a witticism heard so often it could no longer make us laugh. And then a little boy all alone came "piping down the valley wild."
"Piping down the Valley."
We went with much content over the plain by the Tiber, where there were broad grassy stretches full of sheep and horses, and here and there the shepherds' gypsy-looking huts. It was such easy work now, that we eat our chestnuts as we rode; but beyond the bridge, on which Sixtus V. and Clement VIII. and Gregory XIII., in true papal fashion, have left their names, the hills began again. On we toiled, beneath shady oaks and by rocky places, until we came out on a wide upland. From the treeless road the meadows rolled far beyond to high mountains, on whose sloping side the blue smoke of charcoal-burners curled upward. The moon already had risen, and in the west the setting sun filled the sky with glowing amber light, against which the tired peasants going home were sharply silhouetted.
We were glad to see Cività Castellana. One or two men in answer to our questions had told us we were close to it, but we did not believe them. The fields seemed to stretch for miles before us, and there was not a house or tower in sight. But suddenly the road turned and went down-hill, and there below was the city perched on tufa cliffs, a deep ravine surrounding it. Two carabinieri, in cocked hats and folded cloaks like the famous two solitary horsemen, were setting out on their night patrol. Vespers were just over in the church near the bridge, and along the way where happy little Etruscan schoolboys once whipped homewards their treacherous schoolmaster, little Italian boys and girls, let loose from church, ran after us, torturing us with their shrill cries. Soon their elders joined them, and we were closely beset with admirers. The town too was in a hubbub about us, and in the streets through which we wheeled, men and women came from their houses to follow in our train. At the door of the Albergo, where we were detained for several minutes, the entire population collected. We had difficulty in getting a room. The festa, the padrone said, had brought many country people into the town, and the inns were full to overflowing. If J. would go with him he would see what could be done for us. The search led them through three houses. In the mean time I kept guard over the machine. It was well I did, for once J. had gone the natives closed upon me. Toddling infants and gray-haired men, ragged peasants and gorgeous officers pushed and struggled together in their desire to see. Every now and then a stealthy hand was thrust through the crowd and felt the tire or tried the brake. I turned from left to right crying, "Guarda! Guarda!" I lifted exploring hands from the wheels. But in vain. What was one against so many? A man sitting in the doorway took pity on my sad plight. He came out, and with a stick mowed the people back. Then J. returned, having found a room in the first house, which the padrone had thought fit to conceal until the last.