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

by Joseph Pennell; Elizabeth Robins Pennell

Chiusure. Page 68.

The fact that we were going to Monte Oliveto annoyed the padrone. The monastery is a too successful rival to his inn. Few travellers, except those who are on their way to Monte Oliveto, pass through his town, and few who can help it stay there over night. His list of the evils we should have to endure was the sauce with which he served our beefsteak and potatoes. We must leave the post road for one that was stony and steep. Our velocipede could not be worked over it. It would take hours to reach the monastery, and we had better not be out after dark, for there were dangers untold by the way. But when he had said the worst he became cheerful, and even seemed pleased when we admired his kitchen, where brass and copper pots and pans hung on the walls, and where in one corner was a large fireplace with comfortable seats above and a pigeon-house underneath. But when we complimented him on the walls of his town, Bah! he exclaimed, of what use were they? They were half destroyed. They would be no defence in war-times.

He was right. The walls, strong by the gate, have in parts entirely disappeared, and in others, houses and stables have been made of them. It is on the open space by these houses that the men have their playground. They were all there when we arrived, and still there when we left. Young men, others old enough to be their fathers, and boys were, each in turn, holding up balls to their noses, and then, with a long slide and backward twist of the arm, rolling them along the ground, which is the way Italians play bowls.

Before the afternoon was over we cursed in our hearts the Tuscan politeness we had heretofore praised. About a mile from Buonconvento the road to Monte Oliveto divided. We turned to the right. But two peasants with ox-teams called out from below that we must not go that way. It was all bad. But to the left it was good, and piano, ascending but gently, and we had much better take it. In an evil moment we did. That it ill behooves a wise man to seek counsel in every word spoken to him, we found to our cost. In the first place the ascent was not gentle,—we had not then learned that an Italian calls every hill that is not as straight up and down as the side of a house, piano,—and in the second place the road was not good, but vilely bad. Unfortunately, for half a mile or perhaps more it was fair enough. But when we had gone just so far that we were unwilling to turn back we discovered our mistake. The road we had not taken was that built by the monks hundreds of years ago; we had chosen the new and not yet finished by-way. It was heavy with dust and dirt, and full of ruts and loose stones. Over it we could not ride or even push the tricycle without difficulty. It was in keeping, however, with the abomination of desolation lying to each side. For we were now in a veritable wilderness, a land of deserts and of pits, where few men dwell. All around us were naked, colorless chalk-hills, abrupt precipices and ravines. A few chestnut-trees, a rose-bush covered with red berries growing from the gray earth, were the only green things we passed for miles. It was weary and slow work, and the sun was low on the hill-tops before we came to the point where the two roads met. At some distance above us we saw a large red building surrounded by cypresses, and we knew this must be Monte Oliveto Maggiore. So we took heart again.

But our trouble was not over. The road was better only by comparison, and it was still impossible to ride, and hard work to push or pull the tricycle. It was built of bricks, which lay as if they had been carelessly shot out of a cart and left where and how they fell. A little farther on it divided again. A woman was walking towards us, and J. asked her which was the road to the convent (il convento). "You must go back," she said; "it lies miles below,—Buonconvento." "These peasants are fools," said J. in angry English to her very face; but she, all unconscious, smiled upon us. We went to the left, which fortunately was just what we ought to have done. But it was provoking that instead of getting nearer to the monastery, we seemed to be going farther from it. With one turn of the road it appeared to be above, and with the next below us. Now it was on one side and now on the other, until I began to feel as if we were the answer to the riddle I had so often been asked in my childhood, the mysterious "What is it that goes round and round the house and never gets in?" Soon the sun set behind the hills, and the sky grew soft and golden. We met several peasants bearing large bundles of twigs on their heads. There were one or two shrines, a chapel, and a farm-house in front of which a priest stood talking to a woman. But on we went without resting, J. pushing the machine and I walking behind, womanlike shirking my share of the work. The road grew worse until it became nothing but a mass of ruts and gullies washed out by the rain, and led to a hill from which even Christian would have turned and fled. But we struggled up, reaching the top to see the gate of the monastery some sixty or seventy feet below. Finally we came to the great brick gateway which in the dull light—for by this time the color had faded from the sky—rose before us a heavy black pile, beyond whose archway we saw only shadow and mystery. As we walked under it our voices, when we spoke, sounded unnatural and hollow. On the other side the road wound through a gloomy grove of cypresses, growing so close together that they hedged us about with impenetrable darkness. Once several silent figures, moving noiselessly, passed by. Had we, by mischance, wandered into a Valley of the Shadow of Death?

The cypress grove, after several windings, brought us face to face with the building at which we had already so often looked from the distance. Even in the semi-darkness we could see the outline distinctly enough to know we were standing in front of the church, and that the detached building a little to our left was a barn or stable. But not a light shone in a window, not a doorway was in sight. I recalled my convent experience of bygone years, and remembered that after eight o'clock in the evening no one was admitted within its walls. Was there a rule like this at Monte Oliveto, and was six the hour when its bolts and bars were fastened against the stranger? As we hesitated where to go or what to do next, three or four workmen came from the stable. J. spoke to them, and one offered to show him the entrance to the monastery while I waited by the tricycle. It was strange to stand in the late evening and in the wilderness alone, with men whose speech I barely understood and whose faces I could not see. For fully five minutes I waited thus while they talked together in low voices. But at last I heard one cry, Ecco! here was the padrone; and they all took off their hats. A dog ran up and examined me, and then a man, who I could just make out in the gloom, wore a cassock and the broad-brimmed priestly hat, joined the group. "Buona sera," he said to me.

Could I speak to him in French, I asked. Yes, he assented, what was it I wanted? When I told him we wished to stay in the monastery, he said he had not expected us. We had not written.

"But," I exclaimed, "we thought strangers were allowed to stay here."

"Yes," he answered; "there is a pension in the monastery, but it is for artists."

"And my husband is an artist," I interrupted eagerly, for from his manner I feared he would refuse us admission. After all, what did he know about us except that, vagrant-like, we were wandering in the mountains at a most unseasonable hour? Indeed, when later I reflected on the situation, I realized that we must have seemed suspicious characters. At this critical moment J. returned. His guide had led him to a small side-door beyond the church. There he rang and rang again. The bell was loud and clear, and roused many echoes within, but nothing else. The guide, perplexed, then led him back. I told him with whom I was speaking, and he continued the conversation with the padrone. Had they talked in Italian only, or in French, they might have understood each other; but instead they used a strange mixture of the two, to their mutual bewilderment. If this kept on much longer we should undoubtedly spend the night in the open air. In despair I broke in in French: "But, my father, cannot we stay this one night?"