We left at dawn in the postchaise of the Republic. Night had not yet rolled her curtains from the mountains. Eastwards the sea and sky were veiled in tremulous mists, but when we reached the Borgo the silver morning was lightened by a rose and saffron glory. We found the Borgo asleep, though when we left, after waiting half an hour for the mail and picking up a solitary passenger, the church bells on the cliff above were ringing and all the cocks were crowing. How gay and fresh it was! None of the grumblers of the world were out of bed. The cocchiere with the stemma of the Republic in his hat cracked his long whip; the horses made music with their bells, tossing their heads as they smelt the breeze; even the querulous brake made merry over its discomfort as we swung down the hillside.
Long after daybreak the mists lay supine in the valley and there were shadows on the mountains, as though the languid eyes of nature were not yet opened to the morning. But overhead the little clouds were pink as the wings of flamingoes, and when we reached the fields we found the vines, drunk with the magic of the morning, dancing like Bacchanals with linked hands across the valleys, bearing their gifts of purple grapes. Often at the turning of the road we looked back to San Marino, standing up like a biblical fortress with its strong watch-towers overlooking the plain, the home of liberty, where Garibaldi found sanctuary from his pursuers. When we reached Serravalle we saw it through a veil of mist, thin as gossamer spun out of the dawn. Later there were little wisps of cloud-drift hanging on the rocks below the towers. Long ere we drove into the gates of Rimini our Nephelococcygia vanished like a dream into its clouds again.
URBINO
We came to Urbino for the sake of Raphael, the gentle youth who conquered Death in dying, and to see the palace built by the greatest hero of the Rinascimento, Frederic of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. We stayed long after we had made our pilgrimage to the brown palace, where Giovanni Santi reared his motherless immortal, long after we had walked through the decaying splendours of that fairy castle which saw the star of Frederic's dynasty go down not ninety years after it had arisen so brightly on the slopes of Monte Ingino. For Urbino, though she is old and faded, though the grass grows in her streets and flowering weeds spring from her cracked and tottering walls, is still a city beautiful, a golden crown upon the green hillside.
We came to the foot of her vine-clad slopes after three hours of journeying through a world of shadowy mountains which had moonlit gossamer resting on their peaks, and silver rivers running through their valleys. Her towers gleamed white as polished ivory against the vaporous sky; her many lights were like a diadem of jewels out-brilliancing the stars. As we climbed up the hillside in the chill night air every turn of the road revealed fresh vistas of mountain peaks rising like crested waves out of the moonlit vapours. And when we reached the summit of Urbino's hill, and found ourselves below the terrific walls of Federigo's palace, we saw above them, limned against the stars, an enchanted palace such as Perrault might have dreamed of, with its towers and esedras transmuted by the moonlight into jade.
Only for a moment; in the next we were rattling over the cobbles of a wide arcaded street lit with electric lights and hung with hundreds of little coloured globes, red and white and green, for the festa of the Venti Settembre. It was so gay and homely after the moonlit silence of the mountains, and the inn we found upon that lonely hill-top was so unexpectedly good, with airy rooms and clean red tiles and snowy bed-linen, that we loved Urbino from the first hour we knew her. When we woke next morning to the music of Sabbath bells and saw the towers of Federigo's palace shutting out our horizon eastwards; and westwards, across a valley, the white houses of Urbino climbing up through their gardens towards the broken walls of her fortezza, we knew that she was to be one of our cities of happy memories. Nor were we disappointed. For in Urbino with her crisp morning air tempering the sunshine, and her vistas of wide valleys and deep-bosomed hills rolling away towards the magnificent crags of the Appennines, we spent some precious days forgetful of the world, which toils and sweats in busy marts and narrow self-made prisons, so far removed in spirit from the hills and all the sweetness that appertains thereto.
