“I don’t know for certain; perhaps ten or twelve miles. If one of my children were here, they could tell you.”
“And do you think I could reach there by keeping on these pleasant paths, without taking the high road, where there is so much dust? such a quantity of dust! It is so long since we have had any rain!”
“I think you can. You can ask at the first village to the right,”—naming it.
“Thank you,” said Renzo, carrying off the remains of his bread, which was much coarser than what he had lately eaten from the foot of the Cross of St. Dionysius; and paying the bill, departed. He took the road to the right, and with the name of Gorgonzola in his mouth, from village to village, he succeeded in reaching it an hour before sunset.
He had on his way intended to halt here for some more substantial refreshment; he felt also the need of sleep; but rather than indulge himself in this, he would have dropped dead on the road. His design was to inform himself, at the inn, of the distance from the Adda, to contrive to obtain some direction to the cross paths which led to it, and after having eaten, to go on his way. Born at the second source of this river, he had often heard that at a certain point, and for some distance, its waters marked the confines of the Milanese and Venetian states. He had no precise idea of the spot where this boundary commenced, but, at this time, the principal matter was to reach the river. Provided he could not accomplish it by daylight, he decided to travel as long as the darkness and his strength would permit, and then to wait the approach of day in a field, among brambles, or any where, where it should please God, an inn excepted. After advancing a few steps in Gorgonzola, he saw a sign, and entering the house, asked the host for a mouthful to eat, and a half-pint of wine, his horror of which had been subdued by his excessive fatigue. “I pray you to be in haste,” added he, “for I must continue my journey immediately.” And he said this, not only because it was the truth, but from fear that the host, imagining he was going to lodge there, might ask him his name, surname, and whence he came, and what was his business!
The host replied that he should have what he requested, and Renzo seated himself at the end of a bench near the door.
There were in the room some idle people of the neighbourhood, who, after having discussed the great news from Milan of the preceding day, wondered how affairs were going on; as the circumstances of the rebellion had left their curiosity unsatisfied as to its termination; a sedition neither suppressed nor successful; suspended rather than terminated; an unfinished work; the end of an act rather than of a drama. One of them detached himself from the company, and, approaching the new-comer, asked him, “If he came from Milan?”
“I?” said Renzo, endeavouring to collect his thoughts for a reply.
“You; if the enquiry be lawful.”
Renzo, contracting his mouth, made a sort of inarticulate sound, “Milan, from what I hear—from what they say—is not a place where one would go now, unless necessity required it.”