Two Pilgrims' Progress; from fair Florence, to the eternal city of Rome

by Joseph Pennell; Elizabeth Robins Pennell

"Is not the place dangerous? Hath it not hindered many in their pilgrimage?"

We left Siena the morning after the marionette exhibition. The major, when he heard at breakfast that we were going, asked us point blank several questions about Boston publishers, his book probably being still uppermost in his thoughts. Later he sent his card to our room to know at what hour we started; he wished to see us off. The young lady of architectural proclivities shook hands and bade us good-by, saying she had often ridden a sociable with her cousin in England.

After all, there was not much for the major to see. We could not ride through the streets, and so could not mount the machine for his benefit. But he was interested in watching us strap the bags to the luggage-carrier, and pleased because of this opportunity to entertain us with more American reminiscences. I am afraid his amusement in Siena was small. In return for the little we gave him he asked us to come and see him in Rome, where he would spend the winter, and added that if we expected to pass through Cortona he would like to write a card of introduction for us to a friend of his there, an Italian who had married an English lady. Cortona was a rough place, and we might be glad to have it. He had forgotten his friend's name, but he would run upstairs and his wife could tell him. In a minute he returned with the written card. We have had many letters of introduction, but never one as singular as the major-general's. As he knew our names even less well than that of his Cortona friends, he introduced us as "an American lady and gentleman riding a bicycle!" Only fancy! as the English say. Our parting with him was friendly. Then he stood with Luigi and Zara until we disappeared around the corner of the street.

What a ride we had from Siena to Buonconvento! This time the road was all giù, giù, giù. It was one long coast almost all the way, and we made the most of it. We flew by milestone after milestone. Once we timed ourselves: we made a mile in four minutes. The country through which we rode was sad and desolate. On either side were low rolling hills, bare as the English moors, and of every shade of gray and brown and purple. Here rose a hill steeper than the others, with a black cross on its summit; and here, one crowned with a group of four grim cypresses. Down the hillsides were deep ruts and gullies, with only an occasional patch of green, where women were watching sheep and swine. Once we came to where three or four houses were gathered around a small church, but they were as desolate as the land. We heard voices in the distance, but there was no one in sight. When on a short stretch of level road we stopped to look at this strange gray land, the grayer because dark clouds covered the sky, we saw that above the barrenness the sun shone on Siena, and that all her houses, overtowered by the graceful La Mangia and the tall Duomo Campanile, glistened in the bright light.

About five miles from the city the desolation was somewhat relieved, for there were hedges by the roadside, and beyond sloping olive-gardens and vineyards. Poplars grew by little streams and sometimes we rode under oaks. On the top of every gray hill, giving it color, was a farm-house, rows of brilliant pumpkins laid on its red walls, ears of yellow corn hung in its loggia, and gigantic haystacks standing close by. There were monasteries too, great square brick buildings with tall towers, and below spire-like cypresses. But between the farms and fertile fields were deep ravines and dry beds of streams. The road was lonely. Now and then flocks of birds flew down in front of the tricycle, or large white geese came out from under the hedge and hissed at us. For a few minutes a man driving a donkey-cart made the way not a little lively. He did not see us until we wheeled by him. Then he jumped as if he had been shot. "Dio!" he exclaimed, "but you frightened me!" He laughed, however, and whipping up his donkey rattled after us as if eager for a race, talking and shouting all the while until we were out of hearing. One or two peasants passed in straw chariot-shaped wagons, and once from a farm-house a woman in red blouse and yellow apron, with a basket on her head and a dog at her heels, came towards us. It was in this same farm-house we met a Didymus. We stopped, as we had a way of doing when anything pleased us, and he came out to have a better look at the tramway. And how far did we expect to go to-day? he asked. To Monte Oliveto, we told him, for, like pious pilgrims, we thought to make a day's retreat with the monks there. "To Monte Oliveto! and in a day, and on that machine!" and he laughed us to scorn. "In a week, the Signore had better say." Later a stone-breaker's belief in us made some amends for the farmer's contempt. We were riding then. "Addio!" he cried, even before we reached him.

I shall always remember a little village through which we rode that morning, because it was there we saw the first large stone-pine growing by the roadside, which showed we were getting farther south, and because of the friendliness of a peasant. It was a poor place. The people were ragged and squalid and sickly, as if the gloom of the hills had fallen upon them. We asked at a shop for a lemon, but there was not one to be had. "Wait," cried a woman standing close by, and she disappeared. She returned almost immediately with a lemon on whose stem there were still fresh green leaves. "Ecco!" she said, "it is from my garden." "How much?" asked J., as she handed it to him. "Oh, nothing, sir," and she put her hands behind her back. We made her take a few coppers, for the children we told her. As far as it lay in her power I think she was as courteous as those men in a certain Italian town who, in days long past, fought together for the stranger who came within their gates, so eager were they all, not to cheat him, as is the way with modern landlords, but to lodge him at their own expense, so that there were no inns in that town.

Before we reached Buonconvento the sun came out and the clouds rolled away. It had rained here earlier in the morning. The roads were sticky and the machine ran heavily, and trees and hedges were wet with sparkling raindrops. There is an imposing entrance to the little town, a pointed bridge over a narrow stream, with a Madonna and Child in marble relief at the highest point, an avenue of tall poplars with marble benches set between, and then the heavy brick walls blackened with age, and the gateway, its high Gothic arch decorated with the old Sienese wolf and a more recent crop of weeds.

We rode from one end to the other,—a two minutes' ride,—without finding a trattoria. At length we appealed to the crowd. Where was the trattoria? No one understood; and yet that very morning J. had been asked if he were not a Florentine! Perhaps monsieur speaks French? and a little Frenchman in seedy clothes jauntily worn, and with an indescribable swagger, came forward, hat in hand. The effect of his coming was magical. For unknown reasons, when it was found that J. could speak French after a fashion, his Italian was all-sufficient. The inn was here; we were directly in front of it, and the padrone, who had been at our elbows all the time, led the way into it. The Frenchman gallantly saw us through the crowd to the room where we were to dine. It was the best trattoria in the place, but poor enough, he said. Such bread and cheese! horrible! and he shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to heaven in testimony thereof. He did not live in Buonconvento, not he. He came from Paris. Then he complimented J. on his Italian, to make up in some measure for the failure of the people to appreciate it, and with a bow that might have won him favor at court, and a "I salute you, monsieur and madame," he politely left us before our dinner was served. He was a strolling actor, the padrone said; he and his troupe would give a performance in the evening.