“At Carpineto, the paese of Il Gran Ciociaro over there,” he nodded towards the Vatican. “Nonna remembers his Holiness when he was a lad. She was among those pilgrims from his native town to whom he gave an audience the other day. What do you think he said to her? He asked her about the big chestnut tree under whose shade he used to walk when he was studying his lessons. Do you suppose that pleased her? There is no tree in the world that receives such attention as the old chestnut tree of Il Gran Ciociaro at Carpineto.”
V
IN THE ABRUZZI MOUNTAINS
Roccaraso, September 8, 1898.
We left Rome, the heat already somewhat abating, on the 2d of September. Though we had been so anxious to get away, it took an effort of will at the last. Action of any kind was abhorrent, the dolce far niente had us in thrall. We finally got off at nine o’clock one morning, and arrived here at seven the same evening, having changed cars at Solmona, the home of Ovid, where we had an hour and a half to see the sights. Solmona is a good-sized town with paved streets, interesting churches, several inns,—at any of which one might risk putting up,—and a market-place, Piazza Ovidio, where we bought a basket of pears and a flask of wine: one or the other made us very ill; it is much safer to bring along provisions for such a journey. The train next passed through a wide valley, one vast orchard, red with apples “ripe and ready to drop”; then the engine began to tug, tug, up into the mountains. The road is a strategical railway, built not to meet any demand of traffic or travel, but for the transportation of troops.
“Roccaraso is the highest railroad station in Europe,” said the proud person in uniform who took our tickets. Government owns and operates all railroads; the employés are gold-laced, red-tape government officials; this one controls telegraph, mail, express—all intercourse with the outer world. We therefore forbore to mention Brenner, the station in the Alps between the Austrian Tyrol and Italy, which I believed to be even higher.
The town of Roccaraso is above the station, a castello perched aloft on a spur of one of the upper Abruzzi. Below us is a wide, flat valley, all around us are crowding blue mountains, head rising above head, like inquisitive giants peeping over one another’s shoulders. The air is like rarefied electricity; the water has been tested and guaranteed absolutely pure—you know bad water is the danger of these remote, primitive villages. Our friend, the Marchesa di V., asked the engineer who laid out the railroad (it has been open only a few months) to find her a healthy place for the summer. He recommended this
Roccaraso
From a pencil drawing