In another half hour we came to the spurs of the Apennines. The day was breaking, and its light, I hoped, would lay open many a sweet dell and many a romantic peak, before evening. These hopes, as, alas! too often happens in the longer journey of life, were to be suddenly dashed. I felt a warm, suffocating current of air breathing over the valley, and looked up to see the furnace whence, as I supposed, it proceeded. This was the sirocco, the herald of the tempest that soon thereafter burst upon us. Masses of whitish cloud came rolling over the summits of the hills; furious gusts came down upon us from the heights; and in a few minutes we found ourselves contending with a hurricane such as I have never seen equalled save on one other occasion. The cloud became fearfully black, and made the lightning the more awful as it touched with fire the peaks around us, and bathed in an ocean of flame the vines and hamlets on the hill-side. Terrible peals of thunder broke over us; and these were followed by torrents of rain, which the furious winds dashed against our vehicle with the force and noise of a cataract. We had to make our way up the mountain's side in the face of this tempest. At times more than a dozen animals were yoked to our diligence,—horses, oxen, and beasts of every kind which we could press into the service; while half-a-dozen postilions, shouting and cracking their whips, strove to urge the motley cavalcade onward. Still we crept up only by inches. The road in most cases wound over the very peak of the mountain; and there the tempest, rushing upon us from all sides at once, threatened to lay our vehicle, which shook and quivered in the blast, flat on its side, or toss it into the valley below. The storm continued to rage with unabated violence from day-break till mid-day; and, by favour of horses, bullocks, and postilions, we kept moving on at the rate of two miles an hour, now climbing, now descending, well knowing that at every summit a fresh buffeting awaited us.
I had as my companions on this journey, two Russian gentlemen, with whom afterwards, at several points of my tour, I came into contact. They were urbane and intelligent men, full of their own country and of the Czar, yet professing great respect for England, which they had just visited, and looking down with a contempt they were at little pains to conceal, upon the Frenchmen and Italians among whom they were moving. They possessed the sobriety of mind, the turn for quiet, shrewd observation, in short, much of the physical and intellectual stamina, of Englishmen, with just a shade less of the exquisite polish which marks the latter wherever they are met with. These, no doubt, were favourable specimens of the Russian nation; but it is such men who give the tone to a State, while the masses below execute their designs. I have ever since felt that, should we ever meet that people on the field of battle, the contest would be no ordinary one. I recollect one of these gentlemen meeting me on the streets of Rome some weeks afterwards, and informing me that he had been the day before to visit the ball on the top of St Peter's, and that he had been delighted at seeing his Emperor's name, in his Emperor's own handwriting, inside the ball, with a few lines beneath the signature, stating that he had stood in that ball, and had there prayed for Mother Holy Russia,—a fact full of significance.
About mid-day we came, wet, and weary, and cold, to the Duana on the Tuscan frontier, where was a poor inn, at which, after our passports had been viséed, and our trunks and carpet-bags plumbed, we dined. There were some twenty of us at table; a priest taking the top, and the conducteur the bottom. I remember that two persons of the party kept their hats on at table, and that these were the priest and a poor country lad,—the priest because he presided perhaps, and the countryman because, not knowing the etiquette of the point, he wisely determined to follow in that, as in greater matters, the priest. Our dinner consisted of coarse broth, black bread, buffalo beef, and wine of not the sweetest flavour; but what helped us was an excellent appetite, for we had not breakfasted beyond a few chestnuts and grapes picked up at the poor villages through which we passed. We obtained, however, an hour's shelter from the elements.
We resumed our journey, and in about an hour's ride we gained the central chain of the Apennines. Happily the tempest had moderated somewhat; for this, lying midway between the two seas, is ordinarily the stormiest point of the pass. We crossed it, however, with less inconvenience than we had looked for. The summits, which had hitherto been conical, with vines straggling up their sides, now became rounded, or ran off in serrated lines, with sides scarred with tempests and strewn with stones. The scenery was bleak and desolate, as that of the Grampian pass leading by Spittal of Glenshee to Dee-side. But as we continued our descent, the richly wooded glens returned; the clouds rose; and at one time I ventured to hope that I should yet have my first sight of Florence under a golden sky, and that Milton's description might, after all, be applicable to this day of storms:—
"As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heaven's cheerful face, the low'ring element
Scowls o'er the darken'd landskip snow or shower;
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings."
But the hope was short-lived: no Florence was I to see that night; nor was note of bird to gladden the dells. The mists again fell, and hid in premature night those fine valleys, so famous in Florentine history, which we were now approaching. We wound round hills, traversed deep ravines, heard on every side the thunder of the swollen torrents, and, when the parting vapour permitted, had glimpses of the luxuriant woods of myrtle and laurel that clothe these valleys,—
"Where round some mouldering tower pale ivy creeps,
And low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps."
At last we found ourselves on the banks of a broad and swollen river,—the Save,—with no means of transit save a dismantled bridge, so sorely shattered by the flood, that it was an even question whether our vehicle might not, like the last straw on the dromedary's back, sink the structure outright.
We dismounted, and, by the help of lights, measured first the bridge, and next the diligence, and found that the breadth of the former exceeded that of the latter by just two inches. The passengers passed on foot; the diligence, with the baggage, came after; and so all arrived safely on the other side. Our first care was to assemble a council of war in the poor inn which stood on the spot, and deliberate what next to do.
The conducteur opened the debate. "We had," he said, "twenty miles of road still before us; the way lay through deep ravines, and over torrents which the rains must have rendered impassable: it would be long past midnight till we should reach Florence,—if we should ever reach it: his opinion was, therefore, that we ought to stay where we were; nevertheless, if we insisted, he would go on at all risks." So counselled our leader; and if we wanted an argument on the other side, we had only to look around. The walls of the inn were naked and black; the floor was covered inch-deep with slime, the deposit of the flood which had that day broke into the dwelling; and the place was evidently unequal to the "entertainment" of such a number of "men and horses" as had thus unexpectedly been thrown upon it. It is not wonderful, in these circumstances, that a small opposition party sprung up, headed by an English lady, whose delicate slippers were never made for such a floor as that on which she now stood. She could see no danger in going on, and urged us to set forward. Better counsels prevailed, however; and we resolved to endure the evils we knew, rather than adventure on those we knew not.