LECTOR. What is all this?
AUCTOR. It is a parenthesis.
LECTOR. It is good to know the names of the strange things one meets with on one's travels.
AUCTOR. So I return to where I branched off, and tell you that the river Po is here crossed by a bridge of boats.
It is a very large stream. Half-way across, it is even a trifle uncomfortable to be so near the rush of the water on the trembling pontoons. And on that day its speed and turbulence were emphasized by the falling rain. For the marks
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THE MOOR S HEAD
of the rain on the water showed the rapidity of the current, and the silence of its fall framed and enhanced the swirl of the great river.
Once across, it is a step up into Piacenza--a step through mud and rain. On my right was that plain where Barbarossa received, and was glorified by, the rising life of the twelfth century; there the renaissance of our Europe saw the future glorious for the first time since the twilight of Rome, and being full of morning they imagined a new earth and gave it a Lord. It was at Roncaglia, I think in spring, and I wish I had been there. For in spring even the Lombard plain they say is beautiful and generous, but in summer I know by experience that it is cold, brutish, and wet.