And so it is with the flowers. There is the rose and perhaps half-a-dozen more plants, but as for the others “they not got no names, they not want no names.”
My fellow-traveller, speaking of the villagers in the villages we passed through, said:
“They all right as long as they stop here, but when they go away and travel, then they not never happy no more.”
When we reached the floor of the Valle di Sambucco, the people were milking the few cattle that remained there, and the milk purred into the pails as with a deep hum of satisfaction. The sun was setting red upon the Piz Campo Tencia; the water was as clear as the air, and the air in the deep shadow of the bottom of the valley had something of the deep blue as well as of the transparency of the water. We passed the gorge in twilight and presently were again at Fusio. We ordered some wine for the women who had accompanied us, and as they sat waiting for it with their hands folded before them they looked so good and holy and quiet that one would have thought they were returning from a pilgrimage.
I have nothing to retract from what I have said in praise of Fusio. It is the most old-world subalpine village that I know. It was probably burnt down some time in the Middle Ages and perhaps the scare thus caused led to its being rebuilt not in wood but in stone. The houses are much built into one another as at S. Remo; the roofs are all of them made of large stones; there are a good many wooden balconies, but it is probably because it has been chiefly built of stone that we now see it much as it must have looked two or even three centuries ago. If any one wants to know what kind of village the people of three hundred years ago beheld, at Fusio he will find an almost untouched specimen of what he wants. For picturesqueness I know no subalpine village so good. Sit down wherever one will there is a subject ready made. The back of the village is perhaps more mediæval in appearance than the front. Its quaint picturesqueness, the beauty of its flowers, the brilliancy of its meadows, and the genial presence of Signor Dazio prevent me from allowing any great length of time to pass without a visit to Fusio.
I said to Jones once: “It is worth while going to Fusio if only to please Signor Dazio.”
“Yes,” said Jones, “and he is so very easily pleased.”
It is just this that makes it so pleasant to try to please him. I believe all the people in Fusio are good. I asked Guglielmoni once what happened when any one did something wrong. He seemed bewildered. The case had not arisen within his recollection. I pressed him and said that it might arise even at Fusio, and what would happen then? Had they a prison or a lock-up of any kind? He said they had hone, and he supposed the offender would have to be taken down the valley to Cevio, about fourteen or fifteen miles off—but the case had not arisen.
At Fusio, in spite of all its flowers, there are no bees; the summer is too short and they would have to be fed too long. Nevertheless, we got the best honey at Fusio that we got anywhere. Signor Dazio said it was from his own hives at Locarno and had not been “elongated” in any way. What was bought at the shops, he said, was almost invariably “elongated” with flour, sugar and a variety of other things.
The hotel has been much improved during these last two years; the kitchen has been taken downstairs and the old one thrown into the dining-room, which has been newly decorated after a happily-conceived and tastefully-executed scheme. The visitor is to suppose himself seated in a large open belvedere upon the roof of the house, over which a light iron trellis-work has been thrown and gracefully festooned with a profusion of brilliant flowers. In the sky, which is of unclouded blue, birds of lustrous plumage are engaged in carrying a wreath, presumably for the brow of one of the visitors. The lower part of the heavens is studded with commodious hat pegs, two or three doors, the windows, and a substantial fire-place. The gorgeous parrot of the establishment has chosen the point where the sky unites with the right-hand corner of the chimney-piece as the most convenient spot to perch on, and his presence there gives life and nature to the scene. We were struck with the wise reticence of the painter in not putting another parrot at the opposite corner; there is a verisimilitude about one bird which would have been lost with two, for few houses have more than one parrot. The effect of the whole is singularly gay and pleasing. For an English household I admit that there is nothing to compare with Mr. Morris’s wall-papers—except, of course, his poetry—but there is an over-the-garden-walliness, if the expression may be pardoned, about these Italian decorations, a frank meretriciousness, both of design and colour, which will be found infinitely refreshing and may be looked for in vain in the works of our English masters of decoration.