At the turn of the path we came into a delightful lane, between bramble-covered banks; on one side was the dry bed of a little rill, and overhead branches of quaint trees met each other. From the Italian custom of constantly stripping the leaves to provide fodder, the foliage was scanty, yet we went down the steep path in cool and checkered shadow; lizards, darting across the way before us, gleamed as they passed in and out of the light.
This practice of stripping leaves from the trees for fodder, gives a quaint appearance to many of them; in this lane the gnarled and twisted branches looked grotesque. A man high up in one of the trees sang as gaily as a bird, while he filled with leaves a sack fastened to one of the branches.
Now and again the rich transparent purple of the shadows was traversed by a bar of golden light; this sometimes came in irregular flecks from spaces between the twisted trunks and crossing branches.
A woman coming up from the station, with a heavy basket on her head, said, "Buon Giorno," and smiled pleasantly as she passed; then a countryman, a fine, handsome fellow with glowing black eyes, wished us a good journey. He was going at such a pace that he must have been bound for the station; usually the easy, leisureful movements of its people seem to me one of the charms of Italy, so entirely in harmony with the burning, palpitating blue of its skies and the careless luxuriance of its vegetation.
Near the end of the descent is a washing place, and here a woman on her knees was hard at work, scrubbing and soaping linen. Looking back up the lane we saw the grey town peeping at us through the trees,—the tower of a house on the Piazza a prominent feature in the view.
FONTANA BORGHESE
outside PERUGIA
At the foot of the lane we crossed the dusty highroad, and again followed the short way, here very steep and rugged. At the end we came out at a cross-road where the Fontana Borghese, at one angle, made a striking feature; partly shadowed by tall cypresses, it glowed red in the sunshine. The date is 1615; its basin is green with age, and from the constant drip, drip of the water. To-day the fountain was surrounded with wine carts, each drawn by a pair of huge white oxen. It is fortunate these beautiful creatures are so gentle, for their wide-spreading, sharply pointed horns make them formidable; indeed, when the wine season began, during our stay in Perugia, we had sometimes to take refuge in a shop while they passed, for the horns of a pair of these splendid beasts stretched from one side of a narrow street to the other. Inside a little wine-shop opposite the Fontana Borghese we heard shouts of "Dieci," "otto," "sette," etc., from the players at morra.
One of the charms of Perugia is the genial courtesy of the people. My companion on this excursion had stayed several times in the town, and to-day when she appeared at the station all the officials were at her service, full of little friendly attentions, especially one giant-like porter called "Lungo."