In Ronciglione I saw the things that Turner drew; I mean the rocks from which a river springs, and houses all massed together, giving the steep a kind of crown. This also accompanied that picture, the soft light which mourns the sun and lends half-colours to the world. It was cool, and the opportunity beckoned. I ate and drank, asking every one questions of Rome, and I passed under their great gate and pursued the road to the plain. In the mist, as it rose, there rose also a passion to achieve.
All the night long, mile after mile, I hurried along the Cassian Way. For five days I had slept through the heat, and the southern night had become my daytime; and though the mist was dense, and though the moon, now past her quarter, only made a vague place in heaven, yet expectation and fancy took more than the place of sight. In this fog I felt with every step of the night march the approach to the goal.
Long past the place I had marked as a halt, long past Sette Vene, a light blurred upon the white wreaths of vapour; distant songs and the noise of men feasting ended what had been for many, many hours--for more than twenty miles of pressing forward--an exaltation worthy of the influence that bred it. Then came on me again, after the full march, a necessity for food and for repose. But these things, which have been the matter of so much in this book, now seemed subservient only to the reaching of an end; they were left aside in the mind.
It was an inn with trellis outside making an arbour. In the yard before it many peasants sat at table; their beasts and waggons stood in the roadway, though, at this late hour, men were feeding some and housing others. Within, fifty men or more were making a meal or a carousal.
What feast or what necessity of travel made them keep the night alive I neither knew nor asked; but passing almost unobserved amongst them between the long tables, I took my place at the end, and the master served me with good food and wine. As I ate the clamour of the peasants sounded about me, and I mixed with the energy of numbers.
With a little difficulty I made the master understand that I wished to sleep till dawn. He led me out to a small granary (for the house was full), and showed me where I should sleep in the scented hay. He would take no money for such a lodging, and left me after showing me how the door latched and unfastened; and out of so many men, he was the last man whom I thanked for a service until I passed the gates of Rome.
226
ROME CALLS ME
Above the soft bed which the hay made, a square window, unglazed, gave upon the southern night; the mist hardly drifted in or past it, so still was the air. I watched it for a while drowsily; then sleep again fell on me.