When I woke, the sun was up. From my bed I could see over the town, the thin, lazy mists lying on the old camp-ground of Pyrrhus; beyond it were the mountains, which hide Frascati, and Monte-Cavi. There was old Colonna, too, that—
Like an eagle’s nest, hangs on the crest
Of purple Appenine.
As the mist lifted, and the sun brightened the plain, I could see the road, along which Sylla came fuming and maddened after the Mithridaten war. I could see, as I half dreamed and half slept, the frightened peasantry whooping to their long-horned cattle, as they drove them on tumultuously up through the gateways of the town; and women with babies in their arms, and children scowling with fear and hate—all trooping fast and madly, to escape the hand of the Avenger; alas! ineffectually, for Sylla murdered them, and pulled down the walls of their town—the proud Palestrina.
I had a queer fancy of seeing the nobles of Rome, led on by Stefano Colonna, grouping along the plain, their corslets flashing out of the mists—their pennants dashing above it—coming up fast, and still as the wind, to make the Mural Præneste, their stronghold against the Last of the Tribunes. And strangely mingling fiction with fact, I saw the brother of Walter de Montreal, with his noisy and bristling army, crowd over the Campagna, and put up his white tents, and hang out his showy banners, on the grassy knolls that lay nearest my eye.
—But the knolls were all quiet; there was not so much as a strolling contadino on them, to whistle a mimic fife-note. A little boy from the inn went with me upon the hill, to look out upon the town and the wide sea of land below; and whether it was the soft, warm April sun, or the gray ruins below me, or whether the wonderful silence of the scene, or some wild gush of memory, I do not know, but something made me sad.
“Perché cosi penseroso!—why so sad” said the quick-eyed boy. “The air is beautiful, the scene is beautiful; Signore is young, why is he sad?”
“And is Giovanni never sad?” said I.
“Quasi mai,” said the boy, “and if I could travel as Signore, and see other countries, I would be always gay.”
“May you be always that!” said I.