I finished the day with a walk in the so-called Bois de Boulogne de Florence, the Cascine Walk, at the western gate of Florence, between the right bank of the Arno and the railroad. It is the favorite walk of the elegant and fashionable world of Florence, the city called the Athens of Italy. I remember that evening had already fallen and as I was without my watch—I had left it at the hotel—I asked a peasant I met on the road what time it was. The answer I received was so poetically turned that I can never forget it, "Sono le sette, l'aria ne treme ancor!..."
"It is seven o'clock. The air still trembles from the sound."
I left Florence to continue my trip by the way of Pisa.
Pisa seemed to me as depopulated as if it had been swept by the plague. When one considers that in the Middle Ages it was a rival of Genoa, Florence, and Venice, one feels puzzled by the comparative desolation that envelops it. I remained alone for nearly an hour on the Piazza del Duomo, looking with curiosity on the masterpieces which raise their artistic beauty there, the Cathedral or Le Dôme de Pisa, the Campanile, better known as the Leaning Tower, and last, the Baptistière.
Between the Dôme and the Baptistière stretches the Campo Santo, the famous cemetery. The earth for this cemetery was brought from Jerusalem.
It seemed to me that the Leaning Tower was only waiting until I had passed, unlike the Campanile of Venice, in order to bring down deadly destruction on me. On the contrary, it appears that the tower, which aided Galileo in making his famous experiments on gravitation, was never more secure. This is proved by the fact that the seven great bells which sound in full swing several times a day have never affected the strength of this curious structure.
Here I come to the most interesting part of my journey—after I left Pisa, huddled under the top of the diligence, which followed the shores of the Mediterranean, by Spezzia as far as Genoa. What an unreal journey that one of mine was along the ancient Roman Way on the top of the rocks which overlook the sea! I journeyed as though I were in the car of a capricious balloon.
All the way the road skirted the sea, sometimes cutting through forests of olives, and again rising over the tops of the hills where one overlooked a wide horizon.
It was picturesque everywhere; there was always a variety of astonishing views along this way. Traveling as I did by the light of a magnificent moon, it was most ideally beautiful in its originality with its villages in which one saw at times a lighted window in the distance and this sea into which one could see to fathomless depths.
During this journey it seemed to me that I had never accumulated so many ideas and projects, obsessed as I was by the thought that in a few hours I would be back in Paris and that my life was about to commence.