Many of the partisans, half awakened by his voice, gazed with dull eyes at his vanishing form. They heard a flapping of wings around the fire, but it seemed like a dream, and they turned and slept again.
An hour later, the horn of Lagarmitte sounded the reveille. In a few moments every one was upon his feet.
The chiefs assembled their men. Some went to the shed, where cartridges were distributed; others filled their flasks at the cask, but everything was done in order. Then each platoon departed in the grey dawn to take its place at the abatis.
When the sun rose, the farm was deserted, and, save five or six fires yet smoking, nothing announced that the partisans held all the passes of the mountain, and had so lately been encamped there.
Glimpses Of Tuscany.
The Passion At Prato.
IV.
As Good Friday drew near, I was more than once asked by our maestro di casa if I meant to attend the Passion at Prato. Prato is an old walled town in the valley of the Arno, about ten miles from Florence. It contains some twelve thousand inhabitants, whose principal occupation consists in plaiting Leghorn straw, manufacturing Turkish red-caps, smelting copper, and quarrying the dark green serpentine, which figures so extensively in Italian church architecture. It is renowned in Christian art as the shrine of the Sacratissima Cintola. Our maestro explained that once in every three years, from time immemorial, the citizens of Prato had celebrated Good Friday by a nocturnal representation of the Passion; that it was a sight well worth seeing, and famous throughout Northern Italy; that he and his family were going, and that they had a window, or stand, very much at my service. My aunt, who thought nothing worth seeing but the Cascine and her native Lucca, shook her head despairingly, leaving me somehow under the impression that the affair was a large puppet-show accompanied by fireworks. So the matter dropped, and I quite forgot it, until invited on Holy Thursday by an English gentleman, long resident in Florence, to make one of a party to Prato, Friday afternoon. As the trains were uncomfortably full, and all the better public barouches engaged weeks before, we had to put up with an old blue hack, drawn by two lank, slovenly bays. But the hack-horses of Florence are singed cats. Although not unlike crop-eared mules, they can hold a trot or canter all day long, without seeming much more distressed than when they started. We were hardly through the Porta al Prato before our team struck an honest, even, steady lope that soon brought us to the Villa Demidoff.