TO PERUGIA: BY TRAIN AND TRICYCLE.
"Now you must note that the City stood upon a mighty hill, but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease."
The next day I was tired and in no humor for riding. J. wanted once to try the tricycle without luggage over the Italian roads. It was settled then between us that I should go alone by train to Perugia, where we should meet. Before seven we had our breakfast and the padrona brought us her bill. Because we had not bargained in the beginning she overcharged us for everything; but we refused to pay more than we knew was her due. There was the inevitable war of words, more unpleasant than usual because her voice was loud and harsh and asthmatic. She grew tearful before it was over, but finally thanked us for what we gave her, and asked us to come again so gently that we mistrusted her. I thought it wise to wait with the bags at the station, though my train would not start till eleven.
It was a beautiful coast down the mountain between the olives, four miles with feet up. The clouds had rolled away during the night, and it was bright and warm at the station when J. left me to go on his way. It was quiet too, and for some time I was alone with the porters. But presently a young woman with a child in her arms came by. She stopped and looked at me sympathetically. I spoke to her, and then she came nearer and patted me on the shoulder and said, "Poverina!" It seems she had seen J. bring me to the station and then turn back by himself. I do not know what she thought was the trouble, but she felt sorry for me. She was the wife of the telegraph operator, and lived in rooms above the station. She took me to them, and then she brought me an illustrated translation of "Gil Blas" to look at while she made me a cup of coffee. Every few minutes she sighed and said again, "Poverina!" She gave me her card,—Elena Olas, nata Bocci, was her name. I wrote mine on a slip of paper, and when the train, only an hour late, came, we parted with great friendship.
A regiment of soldiers was on its way to Perugia and made the journey very lively. Peasants who had somehow heard of its coming were in wait at every station with apples and chestnuts and wine, over which there was much noisy bargaining. At other times the soldiers sang. As the train carried us by the lake from which the mountains in the distance rose white and shadowy and phantom-like, and by Passignano,—built right in the water, with reeds instead of flowers around the houses, where fishermen were out in their boats near the weirs,—and then by Maggiore and Ellora on their hill-tops, I heard the constant refrain of the soldiers' song, and it reminded me of my friend at Cortona, for it was a plaintive regret for "Poverina mia!" Then there came a pause in the singing, and a voice called out, "Ecco, Perugia!" I looked from the carriage window, and there, far above on the mountain, I saw it, white and shining, like a beautiful city of the sun.
At the station J. met me. He had been waiting an hour, having made the thirty-six miles between Cortona and Perugia in three hours and a half. He too had had his adventures. Beyond Passignano he met a man on foot who spoke to him, and to whom he said, "Buon Giorno." "Good-morning," cried the man in good cockney English, and J. in sheer astonishment stopped the tricycle. The tramp—for tramp he was—explained that he was an Englishman and in a bad way. He had been at Perugia with a circus which had little or no success, and the rascally Frenchman who managed it had broken up and made off, leaving him with nothing. He was now on his way to Florence, where he wanted to be taken on by Prince Strozzi, who kept English jockeys. But in the mean time he was hungry and had no money, and must tramp it all the way. J. bethought him of the card to the gentleman of Cortona who had married an English wife. We had not used it, and it seemed a pity to waste it. The English lady doubtless would be glad of an opportunity to help a countryman. So he gave it to the tramp, together with a franc for his immediate wants. The latter looked at the money. He supposed he could do something with it, he grumbled. He really was grateful, however, for he offered to push the machine up a hill down which he had just walked. But J. telling him to hurry on, engaged instead the services of a small boy who was going his way. For pay, he gave the child a coast down the other side into his native village, than which soldi could not have been sweeter. Did not all his playmates see him ride by in his pride?
Arriving in Perugia, J. himself was a hero for a time. Many officers with their wives were in the station, and in their curiosity so far forgot their usual dignity as to surround him and pester him with questions as to his whence and whither and what speed he could make.
On the Hill. Page 126.
It is a long way from the station up the mountain to the town, but we went faster than we ever climbed mountain before, for we tied the tricycle to the back of the diligence. J. rode and steered it, but I sat inside, ending my day's journey as I had begun it, in commonplace fashion. The driver was full of admiration. We must go to Terni on our velocipede, he said; in the mountains beyond Spoleto we should go down-hill for seven miles. Ecco! no need of a diligence then!