After ascending above the village, the path, though still paved, becomes very rough, as if the hoofs of Ghino di Tacco's robber cavalry had displaced the stones and they had never been readjusted. On every side, too, except where the path just finds space enough, there is an enormous rubbish of huge stones, which seems to have fallen from the precipice above, or else to have rained down out of the sky. We kept on, and by and by reached what seemed to have been a lower outwork of the castle on the top; there was the massive old arch of a gateway, and a great deal of ruin of man's work, beside the large stones that here, as elsewhere, were scattered so abundantly. Within the wall and gateway just mentioned, however, there was a kind of farm-house, adapted, I suppose, out of the old ruin, and I noticed some ears of Indian corn hanging out of a window. There were also a few stacks of hay, but no signs of human or animal life; and it is utterly inexplicable to me, where these products of the soil could have come from, for certainly they never grew amid that barrenness.
We had not yet reached Ghino's castle, and, being now beneath it, we had to bend our heads far backward to see it rising up against the clear sky while we were now in twilight. The path upward looked terribly steep and rough, and if we had climbed it we should probably have broken our necks in descending again into the lower obscurity. We therefore stopped here, much against J——-'s will, and went back as we came, still wondering at the strange situation of Radicofani; for its aspect is as if it had stepped off the top of the cliff and lodged at its base, though still in danger of sliding farther down the hillside. Emerging from the compact, grimy life of its street, we saw that the shower had swept by, or probably had expended itself in a region beneath us, for we were above the scope of many of the showery clouds that haunt a hill-country. There was a very bright star visible, I remember, and we saw the new moon, now a third towards the full, for the first time this evening. The air was cold and bracing.
But I am excessively sleepy, so will not describe our great dreary hotel, where a blast howled in an interminable corridor all night. It did not seem to have anything to do with the wind out of doors, but to be a blast that had been casually shut in when the doors were closed behind the last Grand Duke who came hither and departed, and ever since it has been kept prisoner, and makes a melancholy wail along the corridor. The dreamy stupidity of this conceit proves how sleepy I am.
SETTE VENE.
October 15th.—We left Radicofani long before sunrise, and I saw that ceremony take place from the coupe of the vettura for the first time in a long while. A sunset is the better sight of the two. I have always suspected it, and have been strengthened in the idea whenever I have had an opportunity of comparison. Our departure from Radicofani was most dreary, except that we were very glad to get away; but, the cold discomfort of dressing in a chill bedroom by candlelight, and our uncertain wandering through the immense hotel with a dim taper in search of the breakfast-room, and our poor breakfast of eggs, Italian bread, and coffee,—all these things made me wish that people were created with roots like trees, so they could not befool themselves with wandering about. However, we had not long been on our way before the morning air blew away all our troubles, and we rumbled cheerfully onward, ready to encounter even the papal custom-house officers at Ponte Centino. Our road thither was a pretty steep descent. I remember the barren landscape of hills, with here and there a lonely farm-house, which there seemed to be no occasion for, where nothing grew.
At Ponte Centino my passport was examined, and I was invited into an office where sat the papal custom-house officer, a thin, subtle-looking, keen-eyed, sallow personage, of aspect very suitable to be the agent of a government of priests. I communicated to him my wish to pass the custom-house without giving the officers the trouble of examining my luggage. He inquired whether I had any dutiable articles, and wrote for my signature a declaration in the negative; and then he lifted a sand-box, beneath which was a little heap of silver coins. On this delicate hint I asked what was the usual fee, and was told that fifteen pauls was the proper sum. I presume it was entirely an illegal charge, and that he had no right to pass any luggage without examination; but the thing is winked at by the authorities, and no money is better spent for the traveller's convenience than these fifteen pauls. There was a papal military officer in the room, and he, I believe, cheated me in the change of a Napoleon, as his share of the spoil. At the door a soldier met me with my passport, and looked as if he expected a fee for handing it to me; but in this he was disappointed. After I had resumed my seat in the coupe, the porter of the custom-house—a poor, sickly-looking creature, half dead with the malaria of the place—appeared, and demanded a fee for doing nothing to my luggage. He got three pauls, and looked but half contented. This whole set of men seem to be as corrupt as official people can possibly be; and yet I hardly know whether to stigmatize them as corrupt, because it is not their individual delinquency, but the operation of a regular system. Their superiors know what men they are, and calculate upon their getting a living by just these means. And, indeed, the custom-house and passport regulations, as they exist in Italy, would be intolerable if there were not this facility of evading them at little cost. Such laws are good for nothing but to be broken.
We now began to ascend again, and the country grew fertile and picturesque. We passed many mules and donkeys, laden with a sort of deep firkin on each side of the saddle, and these were heaped up with grapes, both purple and white. We bought some, and got what we should have thought an abundance at small price, only we used to get twice as many at Montanto for the same money. However, a Roman paul bought us three or four pounds even here. We still ascended, and came soon to the gateway of the town of Acquapendente, which stands on a height that seems to descend by natural terraces to the valley below. . . . .
French soldiers, in their bluish-gray coats and scarlet trousers, were on duty at the gate, and one of them took my passport and the vetturino's, and we then drove into the town to wait till they should be vised. We saw but one street, narrow, with tall, rusty, aged houses, built of stone, evil smelling; in short, a kind of place that would be intolerably dismal in cloudy England, and cannot be called cheerful even under the sun of Italy. . . . . Priests passed, and burly friars, one of whom was carrying a wine-barrel on his head. Little carts, laden with firkins of grapes, and donkeys with the same genial burden, brushed passed our vettura, finding scarce room enough in the narrow street. All the idlers of Acquapendente—and they were many—assembled to gaze at us, but not discourteously. Indeed, I never saw an idle curiosity exercised in such a pleasant way as by the country-people of Italy. It almost deserves to be called a kindly interest and sympathy, instead of a hard and cold curiosity, like that of our own people, and it is displayed with such simplicity that it is evident no offence is intended.
By and by the vetturino brought his passport and my own, with the official vise, and we kept on our way, still ascending, passing through vineyards and olives, and meeting grape-laden donkeys, till we came to the town of San Lorenzo Nuovo, a place built by Pius VI. as the refuge for the people of a lower town which had been made uninhabitable by malaria. The new town, which I suppose is hundreds of years old, with all its novelty shows strikingly the difference between places that grow up and shape out their streets of their own accord, as it were, and one that is built on a settled plan of malice aforethought. This little rural village has gates of classic architecture, a spacious piazza, and a great breadth of straight and rectangular streets, with houses of uniform style, airy and wholesome looking to a degree seldom seen on the Continent. Nevertheless, I must say that the town looked hatefully dull and ridiculously prim, and, of the two, I had rather spend my life in Radicofani. We drove through it, from gate to gate, without stopping, and soon came to the brow of a hill, whence we beheld, right beneath us, the beautiful lake of Bolsena; not exactly at our feet, however, for a portion of level ground lay between, haunted by the pestilence which has depopulated all these shores, and made the lake and its neighborhood a solitude. It looked very beautiful, nevertheless, with a sheen of a silver mid a gray like that of steel as the wind blew and the sun shone over it; and, judging by my own feelings, I should really have thought that the breeze from its surface was bracing and healthy.
Descending the hill, we passed the ruins of the old town of San Lorenzo, of which the prim village on the hill-top may be considered the daughter. There is certainly no resemblance between parent and child, the former being situated on a sort of precipitous bluff, where there could have been no room for piazzas and spacious streets, nor accessibility except by mules, donkeys, goats, and people of Alpine habits. There was an ivy-covered tower on the top of the bluff, and some arched cavern mouths that looked as if they opened into the great darkness. These were the entrances to Etruscan tombs, for the town on top had been originally Etruscan, and the inhabitants had buried themselves in the heart of the precipitous bluffs after spending their lives on its summit.