Our approach was by winding roads bordered by hedges, with fields beyond green as England and bright as Italy alone, all abloom to-day with poppies and buttercups. Up and up the shining way climbed the shabby vettura with its lean horse, until we seemed to be getting near the blue of the sky, so close does the arch of heaven lean to these hill towns of Italy.
We all felt that we had left the world of to-day far behind us when we drove through the ancient Porta San Francesco, so entirely does Assisi belong to the past. Here where everything is ancient one ceases to make comparisons, and it seemed no more remarkable to find a Temple of Minerva standing beside twelfth-century buildings, than that we three twentieth-century Americans should be driving about these old streets, hearing the vetturino talk about St. Francis as if he had lived but yesterday.
You really must not expect an ordinary letter of to-day from this place, where we are so absolutely dominated by the twelfth century. Zelphine, who is in a state of rapture and quite lifted above the ordinary affairs of life, is probably writing a poem at this moment, having been incited thereto by the history of Assisi's celebrated poet, Propertius, which she has just read to us from a charming little book which she found in Perugia. The story runs thus: Propertius, who was a contemporary of Virgil and Horace, relinquished the congenial atmosphere of Rome and the friendly companionship of the author of the "Metamorphoses" for the love of his Umbrian birthplace, where the Muse had first visited him. Recognized in his own day as the leader of a new school of poetry, Propertius appreciated his own powers sufficiently to write of himself in connection with his native town: "Ancient Umbria gave thee birth, from a noted household. Do I mistake, or do I touch rightly the region of your home, where misty Mevania stands among the dews of the hill-girt plain, and the waters of the Umbrian lake grow warm the summer through, and where on the summit of mounting Asis rise the walls to which genius has added glory?" His own genius! And yet, to prove to us that he was not wanting in modesty, Propertius has placed this charming compliment in the mouth of a soothsayer. If this is all familiar to you, O most learned, it is so fresh to me that you must allow me to repeat it, because it reveals once more the truth of the Scriptures—that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country. Propertius would not have been forced to sing his own praises if his contemporaries had sung them in the right key.
The little inn at which we are stopping, with its bare, stone floors and whitewashed walls, is quite primitive enough to have suited St. Francis and his brothers. We are told that there is another and larger hotel, which is more modern in its appointments.
"The idea of caring for a modern hotel or anything modern in Assisi!" exclaimed Zelphine, walking with me toward the window of one of the rooms offered us.
A single glance out of that window decided us to stay. The Albergo Giotto is built on a cliff, and literally overhangs the valley. From our windows we look out upon green slopes billowing beneath us until they break away into the long reaches of the plain, where the dome of St. Mary of the Angels stands out against the sky.
Hotel Giotto, Assisi, Sunday, May 2d.
A May-day in Assisi!—could anything be more delightful?
Last night, after dinner, or supper, or whatever the nondescript meal is called which was served to us in the chilly salle à manger, a little lady, unmistakably American and evidently fresh from a study of the hotel register, joined us, and asked Zelphine if she were Miss Vernon, and did she happen to know Dr. Vernon of New York? Zelphine, who adores her brother, Dr. Vernon, and is immensely proud of him, was quite ready to fall upon the little lady's neck when she found that she was one of his admiring patients, and we all adopted her at once, she, Miss Horner by name, being alone and glad to be adopted, as lonely women usually are in remote places.
I spoke to a bright-faced girl who sat on my right at table, and after some conversation learned that she had come from an old Pennsylvania town in which we have many friends and acquaintances. Miss Morris is also alone, and we have adopted her. Angela says that our party is growing too rapidly, and that we really must stop attaching waifs and strays, even if their precious lives have been saved by our brothers, and their social status established by the most irreproachable visiting-lists. Angela may be right; but after all we found it so cheering to gather around the table in the reading-room and talk over friends at home that we quite forgot that we had intended to spend this evening in storing our minds with the history and traditions of Assisi.