And presently we came into a chestnut grove where the path was hidden under a carpet of rustling autumn leaves; and a tangle of wild flowers—harebell, cyclamen, saffron and fireweed—wove a tapestry on the loom of the grass. Here were our nameless tombs, sunk deep in the tufa rock, with over-arching trees above their gates and Canterbury bells growing on their mossy paths. Within, the damp had eaten away many of the beautiful forms about which Dennis wrote. But we could trace the shapes of the Lords and Ladies of Etruria as they sat like shadows before their eternal banquet in the halls of Elysium; we could see the slaves preparing their elaborate feast, here baking bread, there pounding meat to make it tender. And on another wall, a young warrior, attended by a winged genius, bearing in her hand a scroll inscribed with his good and evil deeds, drove in his chariot to Judgement in the Unseen World. In the midst of these wraiths there was one unspoiled fragment of plaster, the head of a youth, beautiful and Greek, who gazed sadly upon the ruin of his gods, shut from the world so fair, which he had dreamt was made for his strong youth and beauty, in whose ears even the faint, half-vanished music of the pipes will soon be silenced, if it is true that when the pictured ghosts of things have faded their soul is stilled.
Their melody rang in our ears when we stood once more in the chequered shadow of the chestnut grove, already gilded with autumnal gold, and looked across the wide pale valley to Orvieto. It was the hour of Mass, a Sabbath day and wonderfully silent. Again we seemed to hear that plaintive strain. But it was only the humming of the insects, and the bells of the distant city calling her people to prayer.
VITERBO
Though they are sisters in name—Urbs Vetus and Vetus Urbs—and though their function in the mediaeval history of the Papacy was the same, it would be difficult to find two cities so dissimilar as Orvieto and Viterbo. The mystic sadness of Orvieto is foreshadowed in the pale valley of the Paglia, strewn with the débris of volcanic upheavals; but instinctively our spirits rose as we drew near the gay and beautiful city of Viterbo, across the rolling plains of Lazio, which have been trodden by the feet of all the armies who sought to invade the sanctuary of Rome. It is a field of history and romance, full of memories.
Far away upon our left the Appennines were piled like storm-clouds on the horizon; and upon our right, over the valleys once guarded by the strongholds of Etruria, rose the splendid outline of Montefiascone, the shrine of the Goddess of the Etruscans—the Fanum Voltumnae, to which they gathered in times of doubt or danger to consult the oracles and appease the gods. Near at hand, black against the blue Sabine mountains, was the mysterious Ciminian Mount, whose terrors held the Roman legionaries in check until the Consul Fabius Maximus in b.c. 310 plunged through its forests into the great Etrurian Plain, to the terror of the Senate, whose prohibition reached him too late.
OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF VITERBO.
The sun was sinking behind the hill of Montefiascone when we entered Viterbo. It was Sunday, and the passeggiata between the station and the Porta Fiorentina was filled with a gay crowd of citizens and soldiers. For unlike the other papal cities of refuge, Orvieto and Anagni, which have fallen upon evil days, Viterbo, always a natural centre, is becoming an important provincial capital, one of the most prosperous towns in Italy, with a rapidly increasing population. And to her honour be it said that her municipal energy is making itself felt to great advantage in the direction of stripping from her Gothic palaces and churches the baroquetries which have veiled their beauties during the last three centuries.