It is a great sheet like a sea; but as one knows one is on a high plateau, and as there is but a short dip down to it; as it is round and has all about it a rim of low even hills, therefore one knows it for an old and gigantic crater now full of pure water; and there are islands in it and palaces on the islands. Indeed it was an impression of silence and recollection, for the water lay all upturned to heaven, and, in the sky above me, the moon at her quarter hung still pale in the daylight, waiting for glory.
I sat on the coping of a wall, drank a little of my wine, ate a little bread and sausage; but still song demanded some outlet in the cool evening, and companionship was more of an appetite in me than landscape. Please God, I had become southern and took beauty for granted.
Anyhow, seeing a little two-wheeled cart come through the gate, harnessed to a ramshackle little pony, bony and hard, and driven by a little, brown, smiling, and contented old fellow with black hair, I made a sign to him and he stopped.
This time there was no temptation of the devil; if anything the advance was from my side. I was determined to ride, and I sprang up beside the driver. We raced down the hill, clattering and banging and rattling like a piece of ordnance, and he, my brother, unasked began to sing. I sang in turn. He sang of Italy, I
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of four countries: America, France, England, and Ireland. I could not understand his songs nor he mine, but there was wine in common between us, and salami and a merry heart, bread which is the bond of all mankind, and that prime solution of ill-ease--I mean the forgetfulness of money.
That was a good drive, an honest drive, a human aspiring drive, a drive of Christians, a glorifying and uplifted drive, a drive worthy of remembrance for ever. The moon has shone on but few like it though she is old; the lake of Bolsena has glittered beneath none like it since the Etruscans here unbended after the solemnities of a triumph. It broke my vow to pieces; there was not a shadow of excuse for this use of wheels: it was done openly and wantonly in the face of the wide sky for pleasure. And what is there else but pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on? Not I hope to contemplation! A hideous oriental trick! No, but to loud notes and comradeship and the riot of galloping, and laughter ringing through old trees. Who would change (says Aristippus of Pslinthon) the moon and all the stars for so much wine as can be held in the cup of a bottle upturned? The honest man! And in his time (note you) they did not make the devilish deep and fraudulent bottoms they do now that cheat you of half your liquor.
Moreover if I broke my vows (which is a serious matter), and if I neglected to contemplate the heavens (for which neglect I will confess to no one, not even to a postulate sub-deacon; it is no sin; it is a healthy omission), if (I say) I did this, I did what peasants do. And what is more, by drinking wine and eating pig we proved ourselves no Mohammedans; and on such as he is sure of, St Peter looks with a kindly eye.