ACROSS THE TIBER TO ASSISI.
"And I slept and dreamed again and saw the same two pilgrims going down the mountains along the highway towards the city."
When we left Perugia in the early morning we passed first by the statue of Julius II., thus receiving, we said to each other, the bronze pontiff's benediction. We imagined this to be an original idea; but it is useless to try to be original. Since then we have remembered the same thought came to Miriam and Donatello when they made the statue their trysting-place. Then we rode through the piazza, where a market was being held, and where at one end a long row of women holding baskets of eggs stood erect, though all around other women and even men, selling fruits and vegetables, sat comfortably on low stools.
The Bronze Pontiff's Benediction, Perugia. Page 134.
On the other side of the Porta Romana we saw that while Perugia was bright and clear in the sunlight, a thick white mist covered the valley, so that it looked as if a great lake, bounded by the mountains, lay below. The chrysanthemums and marigolds, hanging over high garden walls, and the grass by the road-side glistened with dew. Shining silver cobwebs hung on the hedges. Before many minutes, so fast did we go, we were riding right into the mist. We could see but a few feet in front of us, and the olives on either side, through the heavy white veil, looked like spectres. We passed no one but a man carrying a lantern and a cage of owls. It seemed but natural that so uncanny a ride should lead to a home of shadows. And when we came to the tomb of the Volumnii at the foot of the mountain we left the tricycle without, and went down for a while into its darkness and damp. When we came out the mist had disappeared and the road lay through sunshine.
A little farther on we had our first near view of the Tiber. We crossed it by the old Ponte San Giovanni, so narrow that there was not room for us to pass a boy and a donkey just in front. J. called, and the boy pushed his donkey close to the stone wall; but for all that we could not pass. Even as J. called he was stopped by a sudden sharp pain in his side, the result probably of his descent into the tomb while he was still warm; for he had back-pedalled coming down the mountain. And so we waited for many minutes on the bridge to see, not the yellow Tiber one always hears about, but a river blue in mid-stream, white where it came running over the mill-wheel and down the dam, and red and yellow and green where it reflected the poplars and oaks, and the skirts and handkerchiefs of the women washing on its banks. But after the bridge we left the river, for we were bound for Assisi. We had a quiet, peaceful ride for several miles on the Umbrian plain, where in the old times no one dared to go without the permission of the Baglioni, between vineyards and fields where men were ploughing, and through insignificant little villages, until we came out upon the large piazza in front of Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was crowded with peasants, for market was just over, and there came from every side the sound of many voices. When we rode by we were surrounded at once, two or three men keeping close to our side to sing the praises of the hotels at Assisi and shower their cards upon us. They pursued us even into the church, and as far as the little hermitage beneath the dome, to tell us that each and all could speak English.