A later page of that old diary of dates. August 31: Palombara. Well I remember the hot walk to Palombara!
August 3: Mons Lucretilis, that classical mountain from whose summit I gazed at the distant Velino which overtops like a crystal of amethyst all the other peaks. This was during one of my two visits to Licenza. Pleasant days at Licenza, duly noting in the house of Horace what I have noted with Shelley and other bards, namely, that these fellows who sing so blithely of the simple life yet contrive to possess extremely commodious residences; pleasant days among those wooded glens, walking almost every morning in the footsteps of old Ramage up the valley in whose streamlet the willow-roots sway like branches of coral--aloft under the wild walnuts to that bubbling fountain where I used to meet my two friends, Arcadian goat-herds, aboriginal fauns of the thickets, who told me, amid ribald laughter, a few personal experiences which nothing would induce me to set down here.
July 26: La Rocca. What happened at La Rocca?
October 2: Florence. What happened at Florence? A good deal, during those noteworthy twelve hours!
Some memories have grown strangely nebulous; impossible to reconstruct, for example, what went on during the days of drowsy discomfort at Montecelio. A lethargy seems to have fallen on me; I lived in a dream out of which there emerges nothing save the figure of the local tobacconist, a ruddy type with the face of a Roman farmer, who took me to booze with him, in broad patriarchal style, every night at a different friend's house. Those nights at Montecelio! The mosquitoes! The heat! Could this be the place which was famous in Pliny's day for its grove of beeches? How I used to envy the old Montecelians their climate!
July 23: Saracinesca. What happened? I recollect the view over the sweltering Campagna from the dizzy castle-ruin, in whose garden I see myself nibbling a black cherry, the very last of the season, plucked from a tree which grows beside the wall whereon I sat. That suffices: it gives a key to the situation. I can now conjure up the gaunt and sombre houses of this thick-clustering stronghold; the Rembrandtesque shadows, the streets devoid of men, the picture of some martial hero in a cavern-like recess where I sought shelter from the heat, a black crucifix planted in the soil below the entrance of the village--my picture of Saracinesca is complete, in outline.
July 31: Subiaco. Precisely! A week later, then, I walk thirty-two chilometres along the shadeless high road, an insane thing to do, to Subiaco and back. There, in the restaurant Aniene, when all the luncheon-guests have departed for their noonday nap, the cook of the establishment, one of those glorious old Roman he-cooks, comes up to my table. Did I like the boiled trout?
Rather flabby, I reply. A little tasteless. Let him try, next time, some white vinegar in the water and a bay-leaf or two.
He pricks up his ears: we are gens du metier. I invite him to sit down and inquire: how about a bottle of Cesanese, now that we are alone? An excellent idea! And he, in his turn, will permit himself to offer me certain strawberries from his own private store.
"Strawberries?" I ask. "Who ever heard of strawberries in Central Italy on the 31 July? Why, I devoured the last cherry a week ago, and it was only alive because it grew above the clouds."