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Two Pilgrims' Progress 
 
 FROM FAIR FLORENCE TO THE 
 ETERNAL CITY OF ROME 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH AND ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL 
 
 AUTHORS OF 
 
 "^ CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE;' ETC. 
 
 WITH PEN DRAWINGS BY JOSEPH PENNELL 
 
 I^Teto lEtiition 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1899 
 
3DG4 2<^ 
 
 Copyright, 1SS6, 
 By Robekts Brothers 
 
 Copyright, 1899, 
 By Little, Brown, and Company 
 
 j4 II rights reserved 
 
 ©nitersit? \}xi%% 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
A FRIEND'S Apology 
 
 For this Booke, 
 
 By CHARLES G. LELAND. 
 
 Loe! what is this which Ime to sett before ye 1 
 
 It is, I ween, a very pleasant Story, 
 
 How two young Pilgrimes who the World would see, 
 
 Did Wheele themselves all over Italy. 
 
 One meant to write on '/, whence it may be said 
 
 That for the Nonce hers was the Wheelwright's trade ; 
 
 Which is a clever Crafte, for yee have heard 
 
 What flits about as a familiar Word 
 
 Which in a Workshopp often meets the Eare, 
 
 '^ Bad Wheelwright maketh a good Carpentered 
 
 If of a bad one such a Saying 's true. 
 
 Oh what, I pray, may not a good one do ? 
 
 For by Experience I do declare 
 
 ' Tis easier to make Books than build a Chaire. 
 
 Experto crede — I have tried them Both, 
 
 And swear e a Book is easier — on 77iy Oathe I 
 
 He who with her a Pilgriming did go, — 
 
 That ivas her Husband. As this Book doth show, 
 
 845855 
 
A Frie7id's Apology, 
 
 Rar^ skill he hdd when he would Sketches take. 
 And from' those Sketches prittie Pictures make. 
 She with the Pen could well illuminate, 
 He with the Pencil Nature illustrate. 
 Oh, is 7 not strange that what they did so well 
 In the Pen way meets in the Name Pen-fiell ? 
 By which the Proverb doth approved appear e, 
 Nomen est Omen, — as is plain and deer e. 
 Which means to say that every Soule doth Bear 
 A Name well suited to his charactere. 
 
 Now, when this Couple unto Mee did co7?ie, 
 And askt me iff I'de write a little Pome, 
 That Tale and Picture as they routed along 
 Might have some small Accompaniment of Song, 
 I set my Pefi to Paper with Delighte, 
 And quickly had my Thoughts in Black and White. 
 Even as John Bunyan said he did of yore, 
 So /, because I ^d done the like before. 
 Since I was the first man of modern ti?ne 
 Who on the bycicle e'er wrote a Rime, 
 How I a Lady in a Vision saw 
 Upon a Wheel like that of Budda's Law, 
 Which kept the Path and went exceeding fast ; 
 Loe ! now my Vision is fulfilled at last. 
 In this brave writer who with ready Hand 
 Hath guided well the Wheel ore many a Land. 
 Sho7ving the World by her adventurous Course 
 How one may travel fast as any Horse, 
 
A Friend's Apology. 
 
 Without a Steed, and stop where'er ye will, 
 And have for oats or stable ne7'e a Bill. 
 
 Now, for the Book I somethi?tg have to say 
 (Fray inark Mee well, good Reader, while you may^. 
 They say that in the Publick some there bee 
 Who 'II take it ill 'cause it doth Parody 
 John Bunyan's Progress. That can ne'er be said 
 By any who John Bunyan's Booke have read, 
 Since he himself protests against the Whim 
 Of those who said the selfsame thing of him, 
 And thought he lightly treated solemn Things. 
 List the Defence which to this Charge he brifigs : 
 " This Book will make a Traveler of Thee, 
 " If by its Coimcill thou wilt guided be. 
 " And it is writ in such a Dialect 
 " As may the Minds of listless Men affect. 
 " // seems a Novelty, and yet contains 
 " Nothing but sound and hottest Gospel Strains'.' 
 
 Now I can make no more Apologie 
 
 Than Hottest John did make for himself d' ye see; 
 
 As for the Best — if you but cast your Eye 
 
 Upon the Pictures ere the Booke ye buy, 
 
 And if of Art you are a clever Judge, 
 
 The Price for it you '// stirely not begrudge. 
 
 Now, Reader, I have praysed this Booke to Thee, 
 
 I trust that Thou wilt scan Bt carefullie ; 
 
 ^ Twill set before thee Portraiture of Toivnes, 
 
A Friend's Apology. 
 
 Castles afid Towres, antient Villes and Downs, 
 How rowling Rivers to y Oeean hast. 
 Of Roadside Inns and many a f aire Palast, 
 Served «/, I ween, with so much gentle Mirthe, 
 Thoulte fairly own thou 'st gott thy Money's Worth. 
 If thou art Cheated Mi?ie shall bee the Sinn, — 
 Turn o'er the Page, my Lady, and Begin I 
 
 Loe I Vanity Faire ! — the Worlde is there, 
 
 Hee and his Wife beside. 
 Ye may see it afoot, or from the Traine, 
 
 Or if on a Wheel you ride. 
 
To 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, 
 
 Who is responsible for our First Work Together^ 
 
 Who has been the Great-Heart of many a Pilgrimage taken 
 in his Co7npany^ 
 
 We dedicate this Book. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 SECOND AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 Save that thousands of bicyclers now travel the 
 roads, some of which we were the first to ride a 
 tricycle over, the pleasures of cycling in Italy are 
 as great as ever, and the road we followed is still 
 
 one of the best. 
 
 Joseph Pennell. 
 Elizabeth Robins Pennell. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Start ii 
 
 In the Val d'Arno 14 
 
 At Empoli 22 
 
 The Road to Fair and Soft Siena 25 
 
 At Poggibonsi 34 
 
 In the Mountains 36 
 
 Fair and Soft Siena 45 
 
 An Italian By-Road 61 
 
 Monte Oliveto 81 
 
 Through the Wilderness to a Garden .... 94 
 
 We are detained in Montepulciano loi 
 
 In the Val di Chiana 109 
 
 LUCA SiGNORELLl's ToWN Il8 
 
 To Perugia : by Train and Tricycle . . . . .122 
 
 At Perugia ^ 128 
 
 Across the Tiber to Assisi 134 
 
 At Assisi 138 
 
 Virgil's Country 142 
 
8 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Terni and its Falls 155 
 
 In the L.A.ND OF Brigands 157 
 
 A Middling Inn 164 
 
 Across the Campagna 166 
 
 The Finish 173 
 
 Appendix ^75 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Over the Ponte Vecchio 14 
 
 In the Sunlight 18 
 
 Lastra 20 
 
 A Perugino Landscape 24 
 
 On the Arno — near Empoli 36 
 
 A Slight Obstruction 40 
 
 Noontime 42 
 
 By the River 50 
 
 Chiusure 6S 
 
 Monte Oliveto 84 
 
 At the Foot of the Cross 96 
 
 Leaving Montepulciano 106 
 
 CORTONA 118 
 
 On the Hill 126 
 
 The Bronze Pontiff's Benediction, Perugia . . . 134 
 
 A Frown of Disapproval, Assisi 136 
 
 Gathering Leaves 146 
 
 " Piping down the Valley " 160 
 
 From Via Flaminia, near Ponte Molle .... 170 
 
 " ASPETTO 1 " 172 
 
TWO PILGRIMS' PROGRESS. 
 
 THE START. 
 
 " They are a couple of far-country 
 men, and, after their mode, are going 
 on Pilgrimaged 
 
 "1 T 7E stayed in Florence three days before 
 ^ ^ we started on our pilgrimage to Rome. 
 We needed a short rest. The railway journey 
 straight through from London had been un- 
 usually tiresome because of our tricycle. From 
 the first mention of our proposed pilgrimage, 
 kind friends in England had warned us that on 
 the way to Italy the machine would be a bur- 
 den worse than the Old Man of the Sea ; por- 
 ters, guards, and custom-house officials would 
 look upon it as lawful prey, and we should pay 
 more to get it to Italy than it had cost in the 
 beginning. It is wonderful how clever one's 
 friends are to discover the disagreeable, and 
 then how eager to point it out ! 
 
12 Two Pilgrims' Progress. 
 
 Our first experience at the station at Hol- 
 born Viaduct seemed to confirm their warn- 
 ings. We paid eight shiUings to have the 
 tricycle' oaVried to Dover, porters amiably re- 
 marking /it .v^buld take a pile of money to get 
 such a machine to Italy. Crossing the Chan- 
 nel, we paid five-and-sixpence more, and the 
 sailors told us condolingly we should have an 
 awfijl time of it in the custom-house at Calais. 
 This, however, turned out a genuine seaman's 
 yarn. The tricycle was examined carefully, 
 but to be admired, not valued. " That 's well 
 made, that ! " one guard declared with apprecia- 
 tion, and others playfully urged him to mount 
 it. To make a long story short, our friends 
 proved false prophets. From Calais to Flor- 
 ence we paid only nine francs freight and 
 thirty-five francs duty at Chiasso. But unfor- 
 tunately we never knew what might be about 
 to happen. We escaped in one place only to 
 be sure the worst would befall us in the next. 
 It was not until the cause of our anxiety was 
 safe in Florence that our mental burden was 
 taken away. 
 
 But here were more friends who called our 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 13 
 
 pilgrimage a desperate journey, and asked if 
 we had considered what we might meet with 
 in the way we were going. There was the 
 cholera. But we represented that to get to 
 Rome we should not go near the stricken 
 provinces. Then they persisted that our road 
 lay through valleys reeking with malaria until 
 November at least. We should not reach 
 these valleys before November, was our reply. 
 Well, then, did we know we must pass through 
 lonely districts where escaped convicts roamed 
 abroad ; and in and out of villages where fleas 
 were like unto a plague of Egypt, and good 
 food as scarce as in the wilderness.^ In a word, 
 ours was a fool's errand. Perhaps it was be- 
 cause so little had come of the earlier prophe- 
 cies that we gave slight heed to these. They 
 certainly made no difference in our plans. On 
 October 16, the third morning after our arri- 
 val, we rode forth sans flea-powder or brandy, 
 sans quinine or beef-extract, sans everything 
 our friends counselled us to take, — and hence, 
 according to them, right into the jaws of 
 death. 
 
IN THE VAL D'ARNO. 
 
 " Now their way lay just upon the 
 bank of the river j here, therefore, 
 Christian ajidhis companion walked 
 with great delight.'''' 
 
 npHE padrone who helped to strap our 
 -*■ portfolio and two bags to the luggage- 
 carrier, our coats to the handle-bars, and the 
 knapsack to J.'s back, and Mr. Mead, the one 
 friend who foretold pleasure, stood at the door 
 of the Hotel Minerva to see us off. The 
 sunlight streamed over the Piazza of Santa 
 Maria Novella and the beggars on the church- 
 steps and the cabmen who good-naturedly 
 cried " No carriage for you," as we wheeled 
 slowly on, over to the Via Tornabuoni, 
 past Doni's, by Viesseux's, up the Lung' 
 Arno to the crowded Ponte Vecchio where for 
 this once at least we were not attacked by 
 the little shopmen, by the Via de' Bardi, then 
 
Over the Ponte Vecchio. 
 
 Page 14. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 15 
 
 back through the Borgo San Jacopo, again 
 along the Lung' Arno, and then around with 
 the twisting street-car tracks, through the Porta 
 San Frediano, and out on the broad white 
 road which leads to Pisa. 
 
 But even before we left Florence we met 
 with our first accident. The luggage-carrier 
 swung around from the middle to the side 
 of the backbone. The one evil consequence, 
 however, was a half-hour's delay. Beyond 
 the gate we stopped at the first blacksmith's. 
 Had either of us known the Italian word for 
 "wire," the delay might have been shorter. It 
 was only by elaborate pantomime we could 
 make our meaning clear. Then the black- 
 smith took the matter in his own hands, un- 
 strapped the bags, and went to work with 
 screw-driver and wire, while the entire neigh- 
 borhood, backed by passing pedlers and street- 
 car drivers and citizens, pronounced the tricycle 
 " beautiful ! " "a new horse ! " "a tramway ! " 
 When the luggage-carrier was fastened securely 
 and loaded again, the blacksmith was so proud 
 of his success that he declared " nothing " was 
 his charge. But he was easily persuaded to 
 
1 6 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 take something to drink the Signores health. 
 After this there were no further stops. 
 
 Our road for some distance went over streets 
 laid with the great stones of the old Tuscan 
 pavement, — and for tricyclers these streets are 
 not very bad going, — between tall gray houses, 
 with shrines built in them, and those high walls 
 which radiate from Florence in every direction, 
 and keep one from seeing the gardens and 
 green places within. Women plaiting straw, 
 great yellow bunches of which hung at their 
 waists, and children greeted us with shouts. 
 Shirtless bakers, their hands white with flour, 
 and barbers holding their razors, men with 
 faces half shaved and still lathered, and others 
 with wine-glasses to their lips, rushed to look 
 at this new folly of the foreigner, — for ours 
 was the first tandem tricycle ever seen in Italy. 
 At Signa, on the steep up-grade just outside 
 the town, we had a lively spurt with a dummy 
 engine, the engineer apparently trying to run 
 us down as we were about to cross the track. 
 After this we rode between olives and vine- 
 yards where there were fewer people. There 
 was not a cloud in the sky, so blue overhead 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 17 
 
 and so white above the far hill-tops on the 
 horizon. The wind in the trees rustled gently 
 in friendliness. Solemn, white-faced, broad- 
 horned oxen stared at us sympathetically over 
 the hedges. One young peasant even stopped 
 his cart to say how beautiful he thought it 
 must be to travel in Italy after our fashion. 
 All day we passed gray olive-gardens and 
 green terraced hillsides, narrow Tuscan-walled 
 streams dry at this season, and long rows of 
 slim straight poplars, — "white trees," a woman 
 told us was their name. Every here and there 
 was a shrine with lamp burning before the 
 Madonna, or a wayside cross bearing spear 
 and scourge and crown of thorns. Now we 
 rode by the fair river of Arno, where reeds 
 grew tall and close by the water's edge, and 
 where the gray-green mountains rising almost 
 from its banks were barren of all trees save 
 dark stone-pines and towering cypresses, like 
 so many mountains in Raphael's or Perugino's 
 pictures. Now we came to where the plain 
 broadened and the mountains were blue and 
 distant. Mulberries the peasants had stripped 
 of their leaves before their time, but not bare 
 
1 8 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 because of the vines festooned about them, 
 broke with their even ranks the monotony of 
 gray and brown ploughed fields. Here on a 
 hill was a white villa or monastery, with long, 
 lofty avenue of cypresses ; there, the stanch 
 unshaken walls and gates of castle or fortress, 
 which, however, had long since disappeared. 
 It is true, all these things are to be seen hastily 
 from the windows of the railway train ; but it 
 is only by following the windings and straight 
 ways of the road as we did that its beauty can 
 be worthily realized. 
 
 Later in the afternoon, with a turn of the 
 road, we came suddenly in view of Capraia, 
 high up above, and far to the other side of the 
 river, — so far, indeed, that all detail was lost, 
 and we could only see the outline of its houses 
 and towers and campanile washed into the 
 whitish-blue sky. And all the time we were 
 working just hard enough to feel that joy of 
 mere living which comes with healthy out-of- 
 door exercise, and, I think, with nothing else. 
 Sometimes we rode seeing no one, and hear- 
 ing no other sound than the low cries of a 
 cricket in the hedge and the loud calls of an 
 
-f 
 
 
 In the Sunlight. 
 
 Fajre 18. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. , 19 
 
 unseen ploughman in a neighboring field; 
 then an old woman went by, complimenting 
 us on going so fast without a horse ; and then 
 a baker's boy in white shirt and bare legs, car- 
 rying a lamb on his shoulders. But then, 
 again, we met wagon after wagon, piled with 
 boxes and baskets, poultry and vegetables, and 
 sleeping men and women, and with lanterns 
 swinging between the wheels, — for the next 
 day would be Friday and market-day, and 
 peasants were already on their way to Flor- 
 ence. There were pedlers, too, walking from 
 village to village, selling straw fans and gor- 
 geous handkerchiefs. Would not the Signora 
 have a handkerchief ? one asked, showing me 
 the gayest of his stock. For answer I pointed 
 to the bags on the luggage-carrier and the 
 knapsack on J.'s back. " Of course," he said ; 
 we already had enough to carry; would the 
 Signora forgive him for troubling her.? And 
 with a polite bow he went on his way. 
 
 We came to several villages and towns, — 
 some small, where pots and bowls, fresh from 
 the potter's wheel, were set out to dry ; others 
 large, like. Lastra, with heavy walls and gates 
 
20 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 and old archways, and steps leading up to 
 crooked, steep streets, so narrow the sun never 
 shines into them ; or like Montelupo, where 
 for a while we sat on the bridge without the 
 farther gate, looking at the houses which climb 
 up the hillside to the cypress-encircled mon- 
 astery at the top. Women were washing in 
 the stream below, and under the poplars on 
 the bank a priest in black robes and broad- 
 brimmed hat walked with a young lady. But 
 whenever we stopped, children from far and 
 near collected around us. There were little 
 old-fashioned girls, with handkerchiefs tied 
 over their heads in womanly fashion, who 
 kept on plaiting straw, and small boys nursing 
 big babies, their hands and mouths full of 
 bread and grapes. If, however, in their youth- 
 ful curiosity they pressed upon us too closely, 
 polite men and women, who had also come to 
 look, drove them back with terrible cries of 
 Via, ragazzi ! ("Go away, children!") before 
 which they retreated with the same speed with 
 which they had advanced. 
 
 Just beyond Montelupo, when a tedious 
 up-grade brought us to a broad plateau, a cart 
 
^\ '^^ v-.^"" \ r 
 
 Lastra. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 21 
 
 suddenly came out a little way in front of us 
 from a side road. A man was driving, and on 
 the seat behind, and facing us, were two nuns, 
 who wore wide straw hats which flapped slowly 
 up and down with the motion of the cart. 
 When they saw us, the younger of the two 
 covered her face with her hands, as if she 
 thought us a device of the Devil. But the 
 other, who looked the Lady Abbess, met the 
 danger bravely, and sternly examined us. 
 This close scrutiny reassured her. When we 
 drew nearer she wished us good-evening, and 
 then her companion turned and looked. We 
 told them we were pilgrims bound for Rome. 
 At this they took courage, and the spokes- 
 woman begged for the babies they cared for in 
 Florence. We gave her a few sous. She 
 counted them quite greedily, and then — but 
 not till then — benevolently blessed us. They 
 were going at jog-trot pace, so that we soon 
 left them behind. '' Buon viaggio',' the Abbess 
 cried ; and the silent sister smiled, showing all 
 her pretty white teeth, for we now represented 
 a temptation overcome. 
 
AT EMPOLI. 
 
 " The pilgrim they laid in a large 
 upper chamber whose window opened 
 towards the stinrisingj the name of 
 the chajnber was Peace ; where he 
 slept till break ofday." 
 
 "1 1 T^E put up that night at Empoli. The 
 ^ ^ Albergo Maggiore was fair enough, and, 
 like all large Italian inns, had a clean spacious 
 stable in which to shelter the tricycle. The 
 only drawback to our comfort was the misery 
 at dinner of the black-eyed, blue-shirted waiter 
 at our refusal to eat a dish of birds we had 
 not ordered. He was very eager to dispose 
 of them. He served them with every course, 
 setting them on the table with a triumphant 
 " Ecco! " as if he had prepared a delicious 
 surprise. It was not until he brought our 
 coffee that he despaired. Then he retired 
 mournfully to the kitchen, where his loud talk 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress. 23 
 
 with the padrona made us fear their wrath 
 would fall upon us or the tricycle. But later 
 they gave us candles, and said good-night with 
 such gracious smiles that we slept the sleep 
 which knows neither care nor fear. 
 
 The next morning their temper was as un- 
 clouded as the sky. They both watched the 
 loading of the tricycle with smiling interest. 
 He had seen velocipedes with two wheels, the 
 waiter said, but never one with three. And 
 that a Signora should ride, \k\^ padrona added, 
 ah ! that indeed was strange ! Then she 
 grew confidential. Only occasionally I caught 
 her meaning, for my knowledge of Italian was 
 small. She had had seven children, she said, 
 and all were dead but one. And I, had I 
 any } And where had I bought my dress ? 
 She liked it so much ; and she took it in her 
 hand and felt it. Should we stay long in 
 Italy.? and sometime we would come back to 
 Empoli } Her son, a litde fellow, was there 
 too. He had been hanging about the machine 
 when we came down to breakfast, and ever 
 since. He stood speechless while J. was by, 
 but when the latter went away for a few 
 
24 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 minutes, — less shy with me, I suppose, because 
 he knew I could not understand him as well, — 
 he asked what might such a velocipede cost ? 
 as much perhaps as a hundred francs? But 
 J. coming back he was silent as before. They 
 all followed us out to the street, the padrona 
 shaking hands with us both, and the boy 
 standing by the tricycle to the very last. 
 
 I 
 
1 44' 
 
 
 u 
 
 Q 
 O 
 
 Pi 
 M 
 
 PL, 
 
THE ROAD TO FAIR AND SOFT 
 SIENA. 
 
 " They went till they came into a 
 certain country whose air naturally 
 tended to make one drowsy.''^ 
 
 " Let us not sleep as do others^ 
 but let us watch and be sober?'' 
 
 TT was good to be in the open country again, 
 ■*• warming ourselves in the hot sunshine. 
 The second morning of our ride was better 
 than the first. We knew beforehand how 
 beautiful the day would be, and how white and 
 smooth was the road that lay before us. The 
 white oxen behind the ploughs, and the mules 
 in their gay trappings and shining harness 
 seemed like old acquaintances. The pleasant 
 good-morning given us by every peasant we 
 met made us forget we were strangers in the 
 land. A little way from Empoli we crossed 
 the Ponte d'Elsa, and then after a sharp turn 
 to the right we were on the road to " fair and 
 
26 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 soft Siena." It led on through vineyards and 
 wide fields lying open to the sun, by sloping 
 hillsides and narrow winding rivers, by villas 
 and gardens where roses were blooming. In 
 places they hung over the wall into the road. 
 We asked a little boy to give us one, — for 
 the Signora, J. added. But the child shook 
 his head. How could he ? The roses were 
 not his, he said. Once we passed a wayside 
 cross on which loving hands had laid a bunch 
 of the fresh blossoms. Sometimes we heard 
 from the far-away mountains the loud blasting 
 of rocks, and then the soft bells of a monas- 
 tery ; sometimes the cracking of the whip of 
 a peasant behind us, driving an unwilling 
 donkey. Then we would pass from the still- 
 ness of the country into the noise and clamor 
 of small villages, to hear the wondering cries 
 of the women to which we were already grow- 
 ing accustomed, the piercing yells of babies, 
 who well secured in basket go-carts could not 
 get to us quickly enough, and the sing-song 
 repetition of older children saying their lesson 
 in school, and whom we could see at their 
 work through the low windows. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 27 
 
 About noon we rode into Certaldo, — Boc- 
 caccio's town. 1 know nothing that interferes 
 so seriously with hero-worship as hunger. I 
 confess that if some one had said, "You can go 
 either to see Boccaccio's house or to lunch at 
 a trattoria, but both these things you cannot 
 do," our answer would have been an immediate 
 order for lunch. We went at once to a trat- 
 toria on the piazza where Boccaccio's statue 
 stands. I doubt if that great man himself ever 
 gathered such numbers about him as we did. 
 Excited citizens, when the tricycle was put 
 away, stood on the threshold and stared at us 
 until the door was shut upon them. Then 
 they pressed their faces against the windows 
 and peered over piles of red and yellow pears ; 
 and every now and then one, bolder than the 
 rest, stealthily thrust his head in and then 
 scampered off before he could be captured. 
 This gave a spice of novelty and excitement 
 to our midday meal. We ordered a very sim- 
 ple lunch, — soup, bread and cheese, coffee and 
 vermouth. But the padrona had to send out 
 for everything. Her sister, a young girl as 
 fair as an Englishwoman, was her messenger. 
 
28 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 We were scarcely seated before she came back 
 with coffee and a large bottle which she set 
 before us. This, of course, was the vermouth, 
 and we half filled our glasses and at once 
 drank a little. The two women stared with a 
 surprise we could not understand. The fair 
 girl now disappeared on a second foraging 
 expedition, and stayed away until we had fin- 
 ished our soup. " Ecco, vermouth ! " she said 
 on her return, putting another bottle in front 
 of us. Then we knew the reason of their 
 wonder. We had swallowed, like so much 
 water, the not over-strong cognac intended 
 only to flavor our coffee. 
 
 Presently the padrona entered into con- 
 versation with us. We were English, she 
 supposed. No ; Americans, we told her. At 
 this there was great rejoicing. They had a 
 brother in America. He lived in a large town 
 called Buenos Ayres, where he kept a tratio- 
 ria. Like theirs it was the Trattoria Boc- 
 caccio. They were glad to see any one from 
 the same country, whether from north or south. 
 Was it not all America ? The padrona went 
 upstairs to bring down his picture that we 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 29 
 
 might see it. Her sister pointed to the pur- 
 ple woollen jersey she wore, and said with 
 pride her brother had sent it to her. It too 
 was American. They even called in their old 
 mother, that she might see her son's fellow- 
 countrymen. 
 
 We spent an hour wandering through the 
 old town, on top of the hill, in which Boccaccio 
 really lived. The sun was shining right down 
 into the streets, in which the gay kerchiefs 
 of the women, the bunches of straw at their 
 waists, and their cornstalk distaffs made bright 
 bits of color. Though we left the tricycle at 
 the trattoria, our coming made a stir in the 
 little place. Our clothes were not like unto 
 those of the natives, and J.'s knee-breeches and 
 long black stockings made them wonder what 
 manner of priest he might be. As we stood 
 looking at the loggia and tower and arched 
 doorway of Boccaccio's house, the custodian, 
 with a heavy bunch of keys, came to take us 
 through it. But we declined his services. We 
 cared more for the old streets and walls and 
 palaces, which, though their greatness has 
 gone, have not been changed since mediaeval 
 
30 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 times, than for an interior, however fine, whose 
 mediaevalism dates from to-day. The old man 
 turned rather sulkily. J., seeing there had 
 been some mistake, explained we had not sent 
 for him. Then his face cleared. The women 
 had said we wanted him, else he would never 
 have disturbed us ; and he took off his hat, 
 and this time went away with a friendly a 
 rivederle. 
 
 The Palazzo Communale, at the highest 
 point of the town, is still covered with the 
 arms and insignia of other years, of the Medici 
 and Piccolomini, of the Orsini and Baglioni. 
 Its vaulted doorway is still decorated with 
 frescos of the Madonna, and saints and 
 angels. But everywhere the plaster is falling 
 away, and in the courtyard grass grows 
 between the bricks of the pavement; and in- 
 stead of pages and men-at-arms, we there saw 
 only a little brown-faced ragged child climb- 
 ing cat-like over the roofs, and a woman scold- 
 ing him from below. We left the town by 
 the frescoed gateway, through which we saw 
 the near hills, gray, bare, and furrowed, the 
 long lines of cypresses, the stretches of gray 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 31 
 
 olives, the valley below with its vineyards, 
 and the far mountains, purple and shadowy, 
 the highest topped with many-towered San 
 Gimignano. 
 
 It is better not to be jocund with the fruitful 
 grape in the middle of the day when one is 
 tricycling. The cognac we had taken at lunch, 
 weak as it was, and the vermouth made us 
 sleepy and our feet heavy. I sympathized with 
 the men who lay in sound slumbers in every 
 cart we met. But their drowsiness forced us 
 into wakefulness. Of the ride from Certaldo 
 to Poggibonsi, I remember best the loud inar- 
 ticulate cries of J. and his calls of '' Eccomi!'' 
 as if he were lord of the land, to sleeping driv- 
 ers. The Italian cry of the roads, rising to a 
 high note and then suddenly falling and end- 
 ing in a low prolonged one, which is indispen- 
 sable to travellers, is not easy to learn. J.'s 
 proficiency in it, however, made him pass for 
 a native when he limited himself to howling. 
 But often donkeys darted into ditches and 
 oxen plunged across the road before the peas- 
 ants behind them awoke. Like Sancho Panza 
 they had a talent for sleeping. 
 
32 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 Once, after we had climbed a short but steep 
 hill and had passed by several wagons in rapid 
 succession, we stopped under the shade to rest. 
 It was a pleasant place. We looked over the 
 broad valley, where the vines were festooned, 
 not as Virgil saw them, from elm to elm, 
 but from mulberry to mulberry, and up to 
 San Gimignano, beginning to take more defi- 
 nite shape on its mountain-top. A peasant in 
 peaked hat and blue shirt, with trousers rolled 
 up high above his bare knees, crossed the road 
 and silently examined the tricycle. "You have 
 a good horse," he then said ; " it eats nothing." 
 We asked him if they were at work in his 
 vineyard. No, he answered ; but would we 
 like to look in the wine-press opposite ? And 
 then he took us through the dark windowless 
 building, where on one side the grape-juice 
 was fermenting in large butts, and on the other 
 fresh grapes had been laid on sets of shelves to 
 dry. He picked out two of the finest bunches 
 and gave them to me. When I offered to pay 
 him he refused. The Signora must accept 
 them, he said. 
 
 As the road was now a dead level and lumpy 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress, 33 
 
 into the bargain, we were glad when Poggi- 
 bonsi was in sight. We drew up on a bridge 
 where a man was standing, to ask him if he 
 knew of a good inn. He recommended the 
 Albergo dell' Aquila. " It is good," he went 
 on, "and not too dear. This is not a town 
 where they take one by the neck," and he 
 clutched his own throat. So to the Albergo 
 deir Aquila we went. We had only to ride 
 through the wide avenue of shady trees, past 
 a row of houses, out of one of which a brown- 
 robed monk came, to rush back at sight of 
 us, past a washing-place surrounded by busy 
 chattering v/omen, and w^e were at the door 
 of the inn. 
 
AT POGGIBONSI. 
 
 " Then she asked hhn whence he 
 was come and whither he was go- 
 ing; and he told her. She asked 
 him also how he got into the way j 
 and he told her. And last she asked 
 his Jiame.'^ 
 
 T^HE Albergo dell' Aquila was even more 
 "^ comfortable than the Maggiore in Em- 
 poli. We dined in a room from whose walls 
 King Humbert and his Queen smiled upon 
 us, while opposite were two sensational and 
 suggestive brigands in lonely mountain passes. 
 The padrona came up with the salad, and she 
 and the waiter in a cheerful duet catechised us 
 after the friendly Italian fashion, and then told 
 us about the visit to their house of the Ameri- 
 can consul from Florence ; of the hard times 
 the cholera had brought with it for all Italy; of 
 the bad roads to San Gimignano and the steep 
 ones to Siena, along which peasants never trav- 
 elled without bearing in mind the old saying, 
 
Two Pilgrhns Progress, 35 
 
 Air ingiu tutti i santi ajutano ; ma alV insu 
 ci vuol Gesu, — " Going down hill, call upon 
 the saints; but going up, one needs Jesus." 
 Before long J. joined in the talk, and the duet 
 became a trio. Never had I been so impressed 
 with his fluent Italian. Even the padrona was 
 not readier with her words than he with his. 
 When I spoke to him about it afterwards, he 
 said he supposed it was wonderful ; he had not 
 understood half of it himself. 
 
 After dinner and in the twilight we walked 
 through the lively crowded streets and into the 
 church, where service was just over. A priest 
 in white surplice left the altar, and another 
 began to put the lights out when we entered. 
 But in the unlit nave many of the faithful still 
 knelt in prayer. The town grew quieter as 
 night came on. But just as we were going to 
 sleep some men went along the street below 
 our window singing. One in a loud clear 
 tenor sang the tune, the others the accompani- 
 ment like a part song, and the effect was that 
 of a great guitar. Their song was a fitting 
 good-night to a day to whose beauty there had 
 been not a cloud. 
 
IN THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 " He saw a most pleasant moun- 
 tainous country, beautified with 
 woods, vineyards, fruits of ail sorts, 
 flowers also with springs atid fou?i- 
 tains, very delectable to behold.^'' 
 
 THROUGH we left Poggibonsi in the begin- 
 -*- ning of the morning, a large crowd waited 
 for us at the door of the inn. The padrona 
 said farewell with many good wishes ; men and 
 women we had never seen before called out 
 pleasantly a rivederle, two carabinieri watched 
 us from the other side of the piazza, the railroad 
 officials at the station cried " Partenza I Par- 
 tenza ! " and then we were off and out of the 
 town. It would be su, su, su, all the way they 
 told us at the inn, but for several miles we 
 went fast enough, so that I felt sure the peas- 
 ants we passed were still only calling on the 
 saints. The ascent at first was very gradual. 
 
ri^ 
 
 w 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 37 
 
 while the road was excellent. There were 
 down as well as up grades, and for every steep 
 climb we had a short coast. Now we came 
 out on villas which but a little before had been 
 above us, and now we reached the very sum- 
 mit of hills from which we looked forth upon 
 mountain rising beyond mountain, — some 
 treeless and ashen gray, others thickly wooded 
 and glowing with golden greens and russets, 
 and still others white and mist-like, and seem- 
 ing to melt into the soft white clouds resting 
 on their highest peaks. All along, the hedges 
 were covered with clusters of red rose-berries 
 and the orange berries of the pyracanthus. 
 The grass by the roadside was gay with bril- 
 liant crimson pinks, yellow snapdragons and 
 dandelions, and violet daisies. Once we came 
 to a vineyard where the ripe fruit still hung 
 in purple clusters from the vines, and where 
 men and women, some on foot and others on 
 ladders, were gathering and filling w^ith them 
 large buckets and baskets. At the far end of 
 the field white oxen, their great heads deco- 
 rated with red ribbons, stood in waiting. Boys 
 with buckets slung on long poles were coming 
 
38 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 and going between the vines. In all the other 
 vineyards we had passed the vintage was over, 
 so we waited to watch the peasants as, laugh- 
 ing and singing, they worked away. But when 
 they saw us, they too stopped and looked, and 
 one man came down from his ladder and to 
 the hedge to offer us a bunch of grapes. 
 
 The only town through which we rode was 
 Staggia, where workmen were busy restoring 
 the old tower and making it a greater ruin 
 than it had ever been before. One town gate 
 has gone, but from the battlements of the 
 other grass and weeds still wave with the 
 wind, while houses have been built into the 
 broken walls. It is a degenerate little town, 
 and its degeneracy, paradoxical as it may 
 sound, is the result of its activity. For its in- 
 habitants have not rested content like those 
 of Lastra with the mediaevalism that surrounds 
 them. They have striven to make what is old 
 new by painting their church and many of 
 their houses in that scene-painting style which 
 to-day seems to represent the art of the people 
 in Italy. Often during our journey we saw 
 specimens of this vile fashion, — houses with 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 39 
 
 sham windows and shutters, churches with 
 make-believe curtains and cords, — but nowhere 
 was it so prominent as in Staggia. 
 
 Beyond Monteriggione, whose towers alone 
 showed above its high walls, the road began 
 to wind upward on the mountain-side. It was 
 such a long, steady pull that although the sur- 
 face was perfect we gave up riding and walked. 
 Our machine was heavily loaded, and not too 
 easy to work over prolonged up-grades. Be- 
 sides, we were not time nor record makers, nor 
 perambulating advertisements, and we had the 
 day before us. We were now closed in with 
 woods. On either side were chestnuts and 
 dwarf-oaks and bushes, their leaves all " yellow 
 and black and pale and hectic red." And oc- 
 casional openings showed near mountain-tops 
 covered with downy gray grass and a low 
 growth like heather, and here and there were 
 groups of dark pines. For an hour at least 
 we were alone with the sounds and silence 
 of the mountains. The wandering wind whis- 
 pered in the wood and black swine rooted in 
 the fallen leaves, but of human life there was 
 no sign. Then there came from afar a regular 
 
40 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 tap-tap, low at first, but growing louder and 
 louder, until, as we drew closer to it, we knew 
 it to be the steady hammering of stone- 
 breakers. There were two men at work in 
 this lonely pass, and as we stood talking to 
 them two more came from under the chestnuts. 
 These had guns on their shoulders, and wore 
 high boots and the high-crowned conventional 
 brigand hats. Ever since we left Florence we 
 had seen at intervals in the fields and woods a 
 notice with the words, " E vietata la bandita',' 
 which we interpreted as a warning against the 
 bandits or convicts for whom our Florentine 
 friends had prepared us. And now we seemed 
 to have come face to face with two of these bri- 
 gands. But it turned out that there was little 
 of the bandit about them save their appearance. 
 Their ^runs were for birds, and later on we 
 learned that the alarming signs were merely to 
 forbid the trespassing of these very gentlemen. 
 A mile or two farther on, the road began to 
 go down again. We were both glad to be on 
 the machine after our walk. We could see to 
 the bottom of the hill, and there was no one in 
 sight. J. let go the brake. None but cyclers 
 

 o 
 
 H 
 U 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 41 
 
 know the delight of a five-minutes coast after 
 hours of up-hill toiling. They, however, will 
 sympathize with our pleasure in the mountains 
 near Siena. But when it was at its fullest, and 
 the machine was going at the rate of about 
 twenty miles an hour, and neither brake nor 
 back-pedalling could bring it to a sudden halt, 
 a man (or the foul fiend himself) drove a flock 
 of sheep out from the woods a few feet in front 
 of us. When we reached them only the first 
 had crossed the road ; of course, all the rest 
 had to follow. They tried to go on right 
 through the wheels, but only succeeded in get- 
 ting under them, setting the machine to pitch- 
 ing like a ship in a heavy sea. But I held on 
 fast; J. stood on the pedals and screwed the 
 brake down ; the little wheel scattered the sheep 
 like the cow-catcher of an engine, and we 
 brought up in the gutter. Before we stopped, 
 J. began a moral lecture to the shepherd, and 
 was showing him how, if the machine had 
 gone over, the consequences would have been 
 worse for us than for his flock. The lecture 
 ended rather ^Wmorally with accidente voi, and 
 imbecile, the deadliest of all Italian maledic- 
 
42 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 tions, punishable in places by imprisonment. 
 The shepherd looked as if he was ready to 
 curse us in return, but before he had time we 
 were out of hearing, though we first made sure 
 that no sheep were injured. We were none 
 the worse for the accident, and the tricycle was 
 unhurt, save for a deep dent in the dress guard. 
 The rest of our way was divided between 
 walking and riding. The woods with their 
 solitude and wildness, but not the good road, 
 came to an end. Once beyond them, we 
 wheeled out by fields where men and women 
 were at work, their oxen whiter than any we 
 had yet seen, by contrast with the rich red 
 of the upturned earth. In olive-gardens peas- 
 ants were eating their midday meal ; men with 
 white aprons, women with enormous Sienese 
 hats, and dogs and oxen were all resting so- 
 ciably together. By the roadside others were 
 making rope, the men twisting and forever 
 walking backwards, a small boy always turn- 
 ing at the wheel. Scattered on the hill-tops 
 and by the road were large red-brick farm- 
 houses, instead of the white ones we had seen 
 near Florence. 
 
fs 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress, 43 
 
 At one, where there was a well on the other 
 side of the wall, we asked for a glass of water. 
 A man brought it to the gate, where he was 
 joined by three or four others. They stared 
 inquiringly at the tricycle, at the bags, and 
 at us, while J. squeezed lemon-juice into the 
 water. Then one opened his mouth very wide 
 and pointed to his teeth : " The little sir," 
 he asked, "is he a dentist?" 
 
 It was noon when we first saw Siena, and 
 we were then at the very walls. In the old 
 days it was always said, " More than her 
 gates, Siena opens her heart to you!" But 
 the heart of him who sat in office by the 
 city gate was shut against us. When we 
 rode past him he bade us descend. To our 
 ''Perche?'' he said it was the law. Oh the 
 vanity of these Sienese ! Through the streets 
 of Florence and over the crowded Ponte 
 Vecchio we had ridden undisturbed ; but in 
 this mountain town, which boasts of but two 
 hacks, and where donkeys and oxen are the 
 only beasts to be frightened, we were forced 
 to get down. The dignity of the law-makers 
 of the city must be respected. So we two 
 
44 l^'^o Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 weary pilgrims had to walk along the narrow 
 streets, between the tall palaces, while tanners 
 in red caps, and women in flowered, white- 
 ribboned festa hats, and priests and soldiers 
 stared, and one man, with a long push-cart, 
 kept close to us like an evil genius in a dream. 
 He was now on one side, and now on the 
 other, examining the wheels, asking endless 
 questions, and always getting in the way. At 
 all the street corners he hurried on before, and 
 with loud shouts called the people to come and 
 see. Then he was at our heels again, shriek- 
 ing his loud, shrill trade-cry into our very ears. 
 J. as a rule is not ill-tempered; but there is 
 a limit to all things. The stupid sheep, the 
 watchful guard, and now this plague of a flower- 
 pedler brought his patience to an end, and on 
 our way through the town he said much in 
 good plain English which it was well the citi- 
 zens could not understand. 
 
FAIR AND SOFT SIENA. 
 
 " For there where I go is enough 
 and to spared 
 
 ^^ Read it so, if you will, in my 
 Book:' 
 
 TTVEN pilgrims of old on their way to 
 -^-' Rome sometimes tarried in castle or 
 village. We could not pass through Siena, 
 discourteous though her first welcome had 
 been, as we had through smaller and less fair 
 towns. So for a day or two we put away 
 our tricycle and the " cockle-shells and sandal 
 shoon " of our pilgrimage. We went to a 
 pension, one at which J. had stayed before, 
 and which he liked. I admit it was better 
 in many ways than the inns in which hitherto 
 we had slept and eaten. There was carpet 
 on the floor of our room, and in it easy-chairs 
 and a lounge. There were elaborate break- 
 fasts at one, and still more elaborate dinners 
 
46 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 at six, and there was always a great plenty, — 
 as the Englishwoman who sat next me, and 
 who I fear had not always fared so well, said 
 when she urged me to eat and drink more 
 of the fruit and wine set before me. "You 
 can have all you want in this house," she fin- 
 ished with a sigh, as if her crown of sorrow 
 was in remembering unhappier things. But 
 we both thought regretfully of the dining- 
 rooms with the bad prints on the walls, and 
 the more modest dinners of our own ordering. 
 I think too we had found more pleasure in 
 the half-understood talk of padroni and waiters 
 than we did now in the elegant and learned 
 conversation of our fellow-boarders, for they 
 were all, it seemed, persons of learning and 
 refinement. There was the retired English 
 major-general who sat opposite and who had 
 written a book, as he very soon let us know. 
 He recognized us as Americans before we 
 opened our mouths to speak, which fact he 
 also let us know by his reminiscences, ad- 
 dressed not to us but to our neighbors. He 
 had travelled in Spain with Mr. Fillmore, the 
 ex-President, " the most courteous of gentle- 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 47 
 
 men ; " he said he well knew Mr. Marion 
 Crawford, the talented novelist, and his uncle, 
 "dear old Sam Ward;" he had counted among 
 his best friends Bay2,xdi Taylor, " as you re- 
 member I have said in my book." This same 
 book which made the major so communicative 
 appeared to have crushed the spirit out of his 
 wife ; she sat silent during dinner, fortifying 
 herself at intervals with weak whiskey and 
 water. 
 
 Then there was the elderly English lady 
 travelling abroad with her daughter "who has 
 just taken up architecture ; " she informed us, 
 " she has always painted heads till now, but 
 she is fascinated by her architectural work. 
 Then I, you know, am so fond of water-colors." 
 And there was the Swedish lady, who could 
 talk all languages, speaking to us in something 
 supposed to be English, and who was as eager 
 in her pursuit of food for the body as for the 
 mind. I count the way in which she greedily 
 swallowed the vino santo in her glass, when 
 our host passed round the table the second 
 time with his precious bottle, one of the won- 
 ders of our visit to Siena. It was pathetic 
 
48 Two Pilgri7ns Progress, 
 
 too to see her disappointment when he turned 
 away, just before he reached her, his bottle 
 empty. And there were still others who knew 
 much about pictures and palaces, statues and 
 studios, and no doubt we might greatly have 
 profited thereby. 
 
 But we liked it better upstairs, where we 
 were alone and there was less culture. Our 
 window overlooked a high terrace in which 
 marigolds and many-colored chrysanthemums 
 were blooming, the gardens of the Piccolo- 
 mini Palace full of broad-leaved fig-trees and 
 pale olives, and the wide waste of mountain 
 and moorland stretching from the red city 
 walls to the high, snow-capped Apennines on 
 the horizon. All the morning the sun shone 
 in our windows, and every hour and even 
 oftener we heard the church bells, and the 
 loud, clear bugle-calls from the barracks, once 
 a monastery, whose mass of red and gray walls 
 rose from the near olives. They say it snows 
 in Siena in the winter-time, and that it is cold 
 and bleak and dreary ; but I shall always think 
 of it as a place of flowers and sunshine and 
 sweet sounds. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 49 
 
 But best of all were the hours when we wan- 
 dered through the town, up and down dark 
 alley-ways and flights of steps, under brick 
 arches, along precipitate narrow streets where 
 we had to press close to the houses, or retreat 
 into an open door, to let the wide-horned oxen 
 pass by with their load ; now coming out at the 
 very foot of La Mangia, on the broad, sunny 
 piazza; now by the tanneries where little 
 streams of brown water trickled down towards 
 the washing-place at the foot of the hill, and 
 where the walls were hung with dripping brown 
 skins, probably just as they were when the lit- 
 tle Catherine — her visions already beginning 
 — and Stefano walked by them and towards 
 home in the fading evening light, from a visit 
 to the older and married sister Bonaventura. 
 One hour we were with the past in the 
 shadowy aisles of the Duomo, where Moses 
 and Trismegistus, Solomon and Socrates, 
 Sibyls and Angels looked up at us from the 
 pavement, and rows of popes kept watch from 
 above the tall black and white pillars, while in 
 the choir beyond priests chanted their solemn 
 psalms. Next we were with the present in the 
 
 4 
 
50 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 gay Lizza, under the acacias and yellow chest- 
 nuts, by flower-beds full of roses and scarlet 
 sage, and walls now covered with brilliant 
 Virginia creepers ; and out on the fort above 
 to see a golden sky, and the sun disappearing 
 behind banks of purple, golden-edged, and red 
 clouds, and pale, misty hills, and to look back 
 across the hollov/ to the red town climbing up 
 from low olive-gardens towards the Duomo on 
 its hill-top, and tall La Mangia towering aloft 
 from its own little hollow beyond. From every 
 side came the voices of many people, — of sol- 
 diers in the barracks, of women and children 
 under the trees, of ball-players in the old court 
 below, and of applauding lookers-on lounging 
 on the marble benches. 
 
 The tall unfinished arch of the Duomo that 
 rises above houses and churches, and indeed 
 above everything but the lofty La Mangia and 
 the Campanile, tells the story of greatness and 
 power and wealth suddenly checked. But the 
 deadly plague, which carried off so many citi- 
 zens that not even enough were left to make 
 their city beautiful as they meant it should be, 
 could not take away the great beauty it already 
 

 By the River. 
 
 Pap-e 50. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 51 
 
 had, nor kill the joyousness of its people. 
 There are no Spendthrift Clubs in Siena now, 
 nor any gay Lanos like him Dante met in the 
 hiferno. But there are still laughter and song 
 loving Sienese who in their own simple fash- 
 ion ^o through life gathering rosebuds while 
 they may. It seemed to me a very pretty 
 fashion when I saw them holiday-making on 
 Sunday afternoon, peasants, priests, officers, 
 townspeople, all out in their Sunday best, 
 and when on the Via Cavour, near the Loggia^ 
 we met two wandering minstrels singing love- 
 songs through the town. One played on a 
 mandolin which hung from his neck by a wide 
 red ribbon, and as he played he sang. His 
 voice was loud and strong and very sweet, and 
 like another Orpheus he drew after him all 
 who heard his music. His companion sold 
 copies of the song, printed on pink paper, gay 
 as the words. He went bowing and smiling 
 in and out of the crowd, — from the women 
 whose broad hats waved as they kept time to 
 the singing, to the men who had stuck feathers 
 in their soft felts worn jauntily on one side ; 
 from demure little girls holding their nurses' 
 
52 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 hands, to swaggering soldiers. Then when the 
 first singer rested he, in his turn, sang a verse. 
 There was with them a small boy who every 
 now and then broke in in a high treble, so that 
 there w^as no pause in the singing. 
 
 Wherever we w^ent that afternoon, whether 
 by the Duomo or out by the Porta Romana, 
 on the Lizza or near San Domenico, we saw 
 large written posters, announcing that at six 
 in the evening there would be, at No. 17 
 Via Ricasoli, a great marionette performance 
 of the Ponte dei Sospiri. Apparently this was 
 to be the event of the day, and to it we deter^ 
 mined to go. When a little before the ap- 
 pointed hour we came to the Via Ricasoli, we 
 half expected to see a theatre ablaze with light. 
 What we did find after much difficulty was a 
 low doorway on the ground floor of a many- 
 storied palace, and before it a woman by a 
 table, lighting a very small lamp, to the evident 
 satisfaction of half a dozen youngsters. Over 
 the open doorway was a chintz curtain ; be- 
 hind it, darkness. This was not encouraging. 
 But presently a woman with a child came to 
 buy tickets. One of the group of youthful 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 53 
 
 admirers was then sent up and a second down 
 the street, and after they had come back with 
 mysterious bundles another lamp was produced, 
 lit, and carried inside, and the first two of the 
 audience followed. It was now five minutes of 
 six, so we also bought our tickets, three soldiy 
 or cents, for each, and the curtain was drawn 
 for us. 
 
 A low crypt-like room with vaulted ceiling ; 
 at one end two screens covered with white 
 sheets ; between them a stage somewhat larger 
 than that of a street Punch, with a curtain 
 representing a characteristic Sienese brick wall 
 enclosing a fountain ; several rows of rough 
 wooden benches, and one of chairs, — this was 
 what we saw by the dim light of one lamp. 
 We sat on the last bench. The audience 
 probably would be more entertaining than the 
 play. But the humble shall be exalted. The 
 woman on the front row bade us come up 
 higher. The small boy who acted as usher 
 told us we might have two of the chairs for 
 two soldi more. The ticket-seller even came 
 in, and in soft pleading tones said that we 
 might have any places we wanted ; why then 
 
54 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 should we choose the worst? But we refused 
 the exaltation. 
 
 The audience now began to arrive in good 
 earnest. Five ragged boys of the gamin spe- 
 cies, one of a neater order with his little sister 
 by the hand, two soldiers, a lady with a blue 
 feather in her bonnet, and her child and nurse, 
 two young girls, — and the benches were al- 
 most filled. Our friend the ticket-seller be- 
 came very active as business grew brisk. She 
 was always running in and out, now giving 
 this one a seat, now rearranging the reserved 
 chairs, and now keeping the younger members 
 of the audience in order. Ragazzini, she called 
 the unruly boys who stood up on the benches 
 and whistled and sang, so that I wondered 
 what diminutive she gave the swells on the 
 front row. This was amusing enough, but our 
 dinner-hour was half-past six. J. looked at 
 his watch ; it was a quarter past. The ever- 
 watchful keeper of the show saw him. " Ah, 
 the Signore must not be impatient. Ecco ! 
 the music was about to begin." Begin it did 
 indeed, to be continued with a persistency 
 which made us fear it would never end. The 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 55 
 
 musicians were two. A young man in vel- 
 veteen coat and long yellow necktie played 
 the clarionet, and another the cornet. They 
 knew only one tune, — a waltz I think it was 
 meant to be, — but that they gave without stint, 
 playing it over and over again, even while 
 the ticket-seller made them move from* their 
 chairs to a long, high box by the wall ; and 
 when a third arrived with a trombone they 
 let him join in when and as it best pleased 
 him. When we had heard at least the twenty- 
 fifth repetition of the waltz, had looked at the 
 scuffling of the ragazzini until even that pleas- 
 ure palled, had seen the soldiers smoke sigaro 
 Cavour after sigaro Cavour so that the air 
 grew heavy, and had watched the gradual 
 growth of the audience until every place was 
 filled, our patience was exhausted. Behold! 
 we said to the woman with the gentle voice, 
 it was now seven. The play was announced 
 for six. Was this right .^ In a house not far 
 off every one was eating, and two covers were 
 laid for us. But here we were in this dark 
 room in our hunger, waiting for marionettes 
 whose wires for aught we knew were broken. 
 
56 Two Pilgrims' Progress. 
 
 She became penitent. The signorini must 
 forgive her. The wires were not broken, but 
 he who pulled them had not arrived. There 
 was yet time. Would we not go and dine 
 and then come back? She would admit us 
 on our return. 
 
 And so we went and had our dinner, well 
 seasoned with polite conversation. The ticket- 
 agent was true to her word. When we re- 
 appeared at her door, the curtain was pulled 
 at once. In the mean time the musicians had 
 been suppressed, not only out of hearing but 
 out of sight. * The room was so crowded that 
 many who had arrived during our absence 
 were standing. Indeed, there must have been 
 by this time fully five francs in the house. All 
 were watching with entranced eyes the move- 
 ments of four or five puppets. The scene 
 represented an interior which, I suppose, was 
 that of the prison to one side of the Bridge 
 of Sighs. That it was intended for a cell also 
 seemed evident, because the one portable piece 
 of furniture on the stage was a low, flat couch 
 of a shape which as every one who has been 
 to the theatre, but never to prison, knows is 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 57 
 
 peculiar to the latter. It was impossible to 
 lose sight of it, as the dramatis personce made 
 their exits and entrances over it. It was rather 
 funny to see the villain of the piece after an 
 outbreak of passion, or an elegant long-haired 
 page in crimson clad, after a gentlemanly 
 speech, suddenly vault over it. We could not 
 discover what the play was about. Besides the 
 two above-mentioned characters there was a 
 puppet with a large red face and green coat 
 and trousers who gave moral tone to the dia- 
 logue, and another with heavy black beard 
 and turban-like head-dress and much velvet 
 and lace whom we took to be a person of 
 rank. As they came yi and out by turn, it 
 was impossible to decide which was the pris- 
 oner. With the exception of the jumps over 
 the couch, there was little action in the per- 
 formance. Its only two noticeable features . 
 were — first, the fact that villain, page, moralist, 
 and magnate spoke in exactly the same voice 
 and with the same expression ; and, secondly, 
 that they had an irrepressible tendency to 
 stand in the air rather than on the floor, as 
 if they had borrowed Mr. Stockton's negative- 
 
58 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 gravity machine. The applause and laughter 
 and rapt attention of the audience proved the 
 play to be much to their liking. But for us 
 inappreciative foreigners a little of it went a 
 great way. As nothing but talk came of all 
 the villany and moralizing and grandeur and 
 prettiness, — which may have been a clever 
 bit of realism of which the English drama is 
 not yet capable, — and as there was no ap- 
 parent reason why the dialogue should ever 
 come to an end, we went away after the next 
 act. The ticket-seller was surprised at our 
 sudden change from eagerness to indifference, 
 but not offended. She thanked us for our 
 patronage and wished us a felice notte. 
 
 With the darkness the gayety of the town 
 had increased. In the large theatre a play was 
 being performed by a company of amateurs. 
 Having had tickets given us, we looked in for 
 a few minutes, but found it as wordy as that of 
 the puppets. In a neighboring piazza the pro- 
 prietor of a large van, like those to be seen at 
 country fairs at home, was exhibiting a man, 
 arrayed in a suit of rubber, with a large brass 
 helmet-like arranirement on his head, who, it 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress, 59 
 
 seemed, could live at the bottom of the sea, 
 along with Neptune and the Naiads, as com- 
 fortably as on dry shore. Ecco ! There was 
 the tank within, where this marvel could be 
 seen, — a human being living under the water 
 and none the worse for it ! Admission was 
 four soldi, but per militari e ragazzi (" for the 
 military and children") it was but two! So 
 it seems that the soldiers who abroad are to 
 strike terror into the enemy, at home are 
 ranked with the young of the land, since 
 like them their name is legion ! There were 
 about a dozen in the crowd, and, all uncon- 
 scious of the sarcasm, they hurried up the steps 
 and into the show, while an old man ground 
 out of a hand-organ the appropriate tune of 
 " O, que faime les militaires I " 
 
 But dramas and shows were not the only 
 Sunday-evening amusements. The caffes were 
 crowded. Judging from the glimpses we had 
 into little black, cavern-like wine-shops, an- 
 other Saint Bernardino is needed to set 
 makers of gaming-tools in Siena to the manu- 
 facture of holier articles. And more than once, 
 as we walked homewards in the starlight, we 
 
6o Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 heard the voices of the three minstrels singing 
 of human passion in the streets where Cathe- 
 rine so often preached the rapture of divine 
 love. If swans were now seen in visions by 
 fond Sienese matrons, they would wing their 
 way earthward and not heavenward, as in the 
 days when Blessed Bernardo's mother dreamed 
 dreams. 
 
AN ITALIAN BY-ROAD. 
 
 ^^ And the name of the going up 
 the side of the hill is called Diffi,- 
 cultyJ''' 
 
 '"'' Is not the place dangerous? 
 Hath it not hindered many in their 
 pilgrimage ? " 
 
 T T 7E left Siena the morning after the mario- 
 ^ ' nette exhibition. The major, when he 
 heard at breakfast that we were going, asked 
 us point blank several questions about Boston 
 publishers, his book probably being still upper- 
 most in his thoughts. Later he sent his card 
 to our room to know at what hour we started ; 
 he wished to see us off. The young lady of 
 architectural proclivities shook hands and bade 
 us good-by, saying she had often ridden a 
 sociable with her cousin in England. 
 
 After all, there was not much for the major 
 to see. We could not ride through the streets, 
 and so could not mount the machine for his 
 
62 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 benefit. But he was interested in watching 
 us strap the bags to the luggage-carrier, and 
 pleased because of this opportunity to entertain 
 us with more American reminiscences. I am 
 afraid his amusement in Siena was small. In 
 return for the little we gave him he asked us 
 to come and see him in Rome, where he would 
 spend the winter, and added that if we ex- 
 pected to pass through Cortona he would like 
 to write a card of introduction for us to a 
 friend of his there, an Italian who had married 
 an English lady. Cortona was a rough place, 
 and we might be glad to have it. He had for- 
 gotten his friend's name, but he would run up- 
 stairs and his wife could tell him. In a minute 
 he returned with the written card. We have 
 had many letters of introduction, but never 
 one as singular as the major-generals. As 
 he knew our names even less well than that of 
 his Cortona friends, he introduced us as " an 
 American lady and gentleman riding a bi- 
 cycle ! " Only fancy ! as the English say. Our 
 parting with him was friendly. Then he stood 
 with Luigi and Zara until we disappeared 
 around the corner of the street. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 63 
 
 What a ride we had from Siena to Buoncon- 
 vento ! This time the road was all giu, giu, 
 giu. It was one long coast almost all the way, 
 and we made the most of it. We flew by mile- 
 stone after milestone. Once we timed our- 
 selves : we made a mile in four minutes. The 
 country through which we rode was sad and 
 desolate. On either side were low rolling hills, 
 bare as the English moors, and of every shade 
 of gray and brown and purple. Here rose a 
 hill steeper than the others, with a black cross 
 on its summit ; and here, one crowned with a 
 group of four grim cypresses. Down the hill- 
 sides were deep ruts and gullies, with only an 
 occasional patch of green, where women were 
 watching sheep and swine. Once we came 
 to where three or four houses were gathered 
 around a small church, but they were as deso- 
 late as the land. We heard voices in the dis- 
 tance, but there was no one in sight. When 
 on a short stretch of level road we stopped to 
 look at this strange gray land, the grayer be- 
 cause dark clouds covered the sky, we saw that 
 above the barrenness the sun shone on Siena, 
 and that all her houses, overtowered by the 
 
64 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 graceful La Mangia and the tall Duomo Cam- 
 panile, glistened in the bright light. 
 
 About five miles from the city the desolation 
 was somewhat relieved, for there were hedges 
 by the roadside, and beyond sloping olive- 
 gardens and vineyards. Poplars grew by little 
 streams and sometimes we rode under oaks. 
 On the top of every gray hill, giving it color, 
 was a farm-house, rows of brilliant pumpkins 
 laid on its red walls, ears of yellow corn hung 
 in its loggia, and gigantic haystacks standing 
 close by. There were monasteries too, great 
 square brick buildings with tall towers, and 
 below spire -like cypresses. But between the 
 farms and fertile fields were deep ravines and 
 dry beds of streams. The road was lonely. 
 Now and then flocks of birds flew down in 
 front of the tricycle, or large white geese came 
 out from under the hedge and hissed at us. 
 For a few minutes a man driving a donkey- 
 cart made the way not a little lively. He did 
 not see us until we wheeled by him. Then 
 he jumped as if he had been shot. " Dio I " 
 he exclaimed, " but you frightened me ! " He 
 laughed, however, and whipping up his donkey 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 65 
 
 rattled after us as if eager for a race, talking 
 and shouting all the while until we were out of 
 hearing. One or two peasants passed in straw 
 chariot-shaped wagons, and once from a farm- 
 house a woman in red blouse and yellow apron, 
 with a basket on her head and a dog at her 
 heels, came towards us. It was in this same 
 farm-house we met a Didymus. We stopped, 
 as we had a way of doing when anything 
 pleased us, and he came out to have a better 
 look at the tramway. And how far did we 
 expect to go to-day? he asked. To Monte 
 Oliveto, we told him, for, like pious pilgrims, 
 we thought to make a day's retreat with the 
 monks there. " To Monte Oliveto ! and in 
 a day, and on that machine ! " and he laughed 
 us to scorn. " In a week, the Signore had bet- 
 ter say." Later a stone-breaker's belief in us 
 made some amends for the farmer's contempt. 
 We were riding then. " Addio ! " he cried, 
 even before we reached him. 
 
 I shall always remember a little village 
 through which we rode that morning, because 
 it was there we saw the first large stone-pine 
 growing by the roadside, which showed we 
 
 5 
 
66 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 were getting farther south, and because of the 
 friendliness of a peasant. It was a poor place. 
 The people were ragged and squalid and 
 sickly, as if the gloom of the hills had fallen 
 upon them. We asked at a shop for a lemon, 
 but there was not one to be had. " Wait," 
 cried a woman standing close by, and she dis- 
 appeared. She returned almost immediately 
 with a lemon on whose stem there were still 
 fresh green leaves. " Ecco ! " she said, " it is 
 from my garden." "How much .^^ " asked J., 
 as she handed it to him. " Oh, nothing, sir," 
 and she put her hands behind her back. We 
 made her take a few coppers, for the children 
 we told her. As far as it lay in her power I 
 think she was as courteous as those rrien in a 
 certain Italian town who, in days long past, 
 fought together for the stranger who came 
 within their gates, so eager were they all, not 
 to cheat him, as is the way with modern land- 
 lords, but to lodge him at their own expense, so 
 that there were no inns in that town. 
 
 Before we reached Buonconvento the sun 
 came out and the clouds rolled away. It had 
 rained here earlier in the morning. The roads 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 67 
 
 were sticky and the machine ran heavily, and 
 trees and hedges were wet with sparkling rain- 
 drops. There is an imposing entrance to the 
 little town, a pointed bridge over a narrow 
 stream, with a Madonna and Child in marble 
 relief at the highest point, an avenue of tall 
 poplars with marble benches set between, and 
 then the heavy brick walls blackened with age, 
 and the gateway, its high Gothic arch deco- 
 rated with the old Sienese wolf and a more 
 recent crop of weeds. 
 
 We rode from one end to the other, — a 
 two minutes' ride, — without finding a trattoria. 
 At length we appealed to the crowd. Where 
 was the trattoria ? No one understood ; and 
 yet that very morning J. had been asked if 
 he were not a Florentine ! Perhaps monsieur 
 speaks French ? and a little Frenchman in 
 seedy clothes jauntily worn, and with an in- 
 describable swagger, came forward, hat in 
 hand. The effect of his coming was magical. 
 For unknown reasons, when it was found that 
 J. could speak French after a fashion, his 
 Italian was all-sufiicient. The inn was here ; 
 we were directly in front of it, and the padrone. 
 
68 Two Pilo^rims Progress. 
 
 who had been at our elbows all the time, led 
 the way into it. The Frenchman gallantly 
 saw us through the crowd to the room where 
 we were to dine. It was the best trattoria in 
 the place, but poor enough, he said. Such 
 bread and cheese ! horrible ! and he shrugged 
 his shoulders and raised his hands to heaven 
 in testimony thereof. He did not live in 
 Buonconvento, not he. He came from Paris. 
 Then he complimented J. on his Italian, to 
 make up in some measure for the failure of 
 the people to appreciate it, and with a bow 
 that might have won him favor at court, and a 
 " I salute you, monsieur and madanie',' he 
 politely left us before our dinner was served. 
 He was a strolling actor, the padrone said ; 
 he and his troupe would give a performance in 
 the evening. 
 
 The fact that we were going to Monte 
 Oliveto annoyed the padrone. The monastery 
 is a too successful rival to his inn. Few 
 travellers, except those who are on their way 
 to Monte Oliveto, pass through his town, and 
 few who can help it stay there over night. 
 His list of the evils we should have to endure 
 

 
 Chiusure. 
 
 Fa;re 68 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 69 
 
 was the sauce with which he served our beef- 
 steak and potatoes. We must leave the post 
 road for one that was stony and steep. Our 
 velocipede could not be worked over it. It 
 would take hours to reach the monastery, and 
 we had better not be out after dark, for there 
 were dangers untold by the way. But when 
 he had said the worst he became cheerful, and 
 even seemed pleased when we admired his 
 kitchen, where brass and copper pots and pans 
 hung on the walls, and where in one corner 
 was a large fireplace with comfortable seats 
 above and a pigeon-house underneath. But 
 when we complimented him on the walls of 
 his town, Bah ! he exclaimed, of what use were 
 they ? They were half destroyed. They would 
 be no defence in war-times. 
 
 He was right. The walls, strong by the 
 gate, have in parts entirely disappeared, and 
 in others, houses and stables have been made 
 of them. It is on the open space by these 
 houses that the men have their playground. 
 They were all there when we arrived, and still 
 there when we left. Young men, others old 
 enough to be their fathers, and boys were, each 
 
70 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 in turn, holding up balls to their noses, and 
 then, with a long slide and backward twist of 
 the arm, rolling them along the ground, which 
 is the way Italians play bowls. 
 
 Before the afternoon was over we cursed in 
 our hearts the Tuscan politeness we had here- 
 tofore praised. About a mile from Buoncon- 
 vento the road to Monte Oliveto divided. We 
 turned to the right. But two peasants with 
 ox-teams called out from below that we must 
 not go that way. It was all bad. But to 
 the left it was good, and piano, ascending 
 but gently, and we had much better take it. 
 In an evil moment we did. That it ill be- 
 hooves a wise man to seek counsel in every 
 word spoken to him, we found to our cost. In 
 the first place the ascent was not gentle, — we 
 had not then learned that an Italian calls every 
 hill that is not as straight up and down as the 
 side of a house, piano, — and in the second 
 place the road was not good, but vilely bad. 
 Unfortunately, for half a mile or perhaps more 
 it was fair enough. But when we had gone 
 just so far that we were unwilling to turn back 
 we discovered our mistake. The road we had 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 71 
 
 not taken was that built by the monks hun- 
 dreds of years ago ; we had chosen the new 
 and not yet finished by-way. It was heavy 
 with dust and dirt, and fiiU of ruts and loose 
 stones. Over it we could not ride or even 
 push the tricycle without difficulty. It was 
 in keeping, however, with the abomination of 
 desolation lying to each side. For we were 
 now in a veritable wilderness, a land of deserts 
 and of pits, where few men dwell. All around 
 us .were naked, colorless chalk-hills, abrupt 
 precipices and ravines. A few chestnut-trees, 
 a rose-bush covered with red berries growing 
 from the gray earth, were the only green things 
 we passed for miles. It was weary and slow 
 work, and the sun was low on the hill-tops 
 before we came to the point where the two 
 roads met. At some distance above us we saw 
 a large red building surrounded by cypresses, 
 and we knew this must be Monte Oliveto 
 Maggiore. So we took heart again. 
 
 But our trouble was not over. The road 
 was better only by comparison, and it was still 
 impossible to ride, and hard work to push or 
 pull the tricycle. It was built of bricks, which 
 
72 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 lay as if they had been carelessly shot out of a 
 cart and left where and how they fell. A little 
 farther on it divided again. A woman was 
 walking towards us, and J. asked her which 
 was the road to the convent (// conventd). 
 " You must go back," she said ; " it lies miles 
 below, — Buonconvento." " These peasants are 
 fools," said J. in angry English to her very 
 face ; but she, all unconscious, smiled upon us. 
 We w^ent to the left, which fortunately was just 
 what we ought to have done. But it was pro- 
 voking that instead of getting nearer to the 
 monastery, we seemed to be going farther from 
 it. With one turn of the road it appeared to 
 be above, and with the next below us. Now it 
 was on one side and now on the other, until I 
 began to feel as if we were the answer to the 
 riddle I had so often been asked in my child- 
 hood, the mysterious " What is it that goes 
 round and round the house and never gets in.?" 
 Soon the sun set behind the hills, and the sky 
 grew soft and golden. We met several peas- 
 ants bearing large bundles of twigs on their 
 heads. There were one or two shrines, a 
 chapel, and a farm-house in front of which a 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 73 
 
 priest stood talking to a woman. But on we 
 went without resting, J. pushing the ma- 
 chine and I walking behind, womanlike shirk- 
 ing my share of the work. The road grew 
 worse until it became nothing but a mass of 
 ruts and gullies washed out by the rain, and 
 led to a hill from which even Christian would 
 have turned and fled. But we struggled up, 
 reaching the top to see the gate of the mon- 
 astery some sixty or seventy feet below. Finally 
 we came to the great brick gateway which in 
 the dull light — for by this time the color had 
 faded from the sky — rose before us a heavy 
 black pile, beyond whose archway we saw only 
 shadow and mystery. As we walked under it 
 our voices, when we spoke, sounded unnatural 
 and hollow. On the other side the road wound 
 through a gloomy grove of cypresses, growing 
 so close together that they hedged us about 
 with impenetrable darkness. Once several 
 silent figures, moving noiselessly, passed by. 
 Had we, by mischance, wandered into a Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death ? 
 
 The cypress grove, after several windings, 
 brought us face to face with the building at 
 
74 Tico Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 which we had already so often looked from the 
 distance. Even in the semi-darkness we could 
 see the outline distinctly enough to know we 
 were standing in front of the church, and that 
 the detached building a little to our left was 
 a barn or stable. But not a light shone in a 
 window, not a doorway was in sight. I recalled 
 my convent experience of bygone years, and 
 remembered that after eight o'clock in the 
 evening no one was admitted within its walls. 
 Was there a rule like this at Monte Oliveto, 
 and .was six the hour when its bolts and bars 
 were fastened against the stranger? As we 
 hesitated where to go or what to do next, 
 three or four workmen came from the stable. 
 J. spoke to them, and one offered to show him 
 the entrance to the monastery while I waited 
 by the tricycle. It was strange to stand in the 
 late evening and in the wilderness alone, with 
 men whose speech I barely understood and 
 whose faces I could not see. For fully five 
 minutes I waited thus while they talked to- 
 gether in low voices. But at last I heard 
 one cry, Ecco I here was ihe padrofie ; and they 
 all took off their hats. A dog ran up and 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 75 
 
 examined me, and then a man, who I could just 
 make out in the gloom, wore a cassock and the 
 broad-brimmed priestly hat, joined the group. 
 '' Buona sera'' he said to me. 
 
 Could I speak to him in French, I asked. 
 Yes, he assented, what was it I wanted ? 
 When I told him w^e wished to stay in the 
 monastery, he said he had not expected us. 
 We had not written. 
 
 " But," I exclaimed, " we thought strangers 
 were allowed to stay here." 
 
 " Yes," he answered ; " there is a pension in 
 the monastery, but it is for artists." 
 
 " And my husband is an artist," I interrupted 
 eagerly, for from his manner I feared he would 
 refuse us admission. After all, what did he 
 know about us except that, vagrant-like, we 
 were wandering in the mountains at a most 
 unseasonable hour } Indeed, when later I 
 reflected on the situation, I realized that we 
 must have seemed suspicious characters. At 
 this critical moment J. returned. His guide 
 had led him to a small side-door beyond the 
 church. There he rang and rang again. The 
 bell was loud and clear, and roused many 
 
76 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 echoes within, but nothing else. The guide, 
 perplexed, then led him back. I told him 
 with whom I was speaking, and he continued 
 the conversation with the padrone. Had they 
 talked in Italian only, or in French, they might 
 have understood each other; but instead they 
 used a strange mixture of the two, to their 
 mutual bewilderment. If this kept on much 
 longer we should undoubtedly spend the night 
 in the open air. In despair I broke in in 
 French : " But, my father, cannot we stay this 
 one night '^. " 
 
 " Certainly," he said, fortunately dropping 
 all Italian. " That is what I was explaining 
 to monsieur. You can stay, but of course we 
 have nothing prepared. We will do our best." 
 
 If he had said he would do his worst, pro- 
 vided we were rid of the tricycle for the night, 
 and were ourselves taken indoors where we 
 might sit down, we should have been thankful. 
 
 The bags were unstrapped and given into 
 the care of one of the men, a place was made 
 for the machine in the stable, and then we fol- 
 lowed the padrone or Abate — for this was his 
 real title — to the door where J. had rung 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 77 
 
 in vain, and which he opened with his key. 
 Within it was so dark that we groped our way 
 through a hall and a small cloister. Then we 
 came to a flight of steps, where at the bidding 
 of the Abate, as if to reassure us that we were 
 not being led to secret cells or torture-cham- 
 bers, the man carrying our bags struck a soli- 
 tary match. By this feeble light we walked 
 up the broad stone stairs and through many 
 passage-ways, not a sound breaking the still- 
 ness but our foot-falls and their loud echoes, to a 
 door where the Abate left us, and at the same 
 time the match burnt out. But the next min- 
 ute he reappeared with a lighted taper, and at 
 the end of the hall opened another door, lit a 
 lamp on a table within, and showed us four 
 rooms, which he said were at our disposal. 
 The beds were not made, but they would be 
 attended to immediately. He had now to say 
 Office, but at nine supper would be served. 
 Here was a very comfortable solution to the 
 mystery into which the massive gateway 
 seemed to lead. The Valley of the Shadow 
 of Death had turned out to be a Delectable 
 Land! 
 
78 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 It was still more comfortable later, when, his 
 Office said, the Abate came back and sat and 
 talked with us. Now he could examine us by 
 a better light I think he concluded we were 
 not dangerous characters, probably only harm- 
 less lunatics. However that may be, after half 
 an hour, when the supper-bell rang and we 
 started off for the refectory, again by the light 
 of his taper, we were the best of friends. The 
 long corridor, thus dimly seen, seemed inter- 
 minable. We went down one stairway to find 
 the door locked against us, then up and down 
 another. Here the light went out, leaving us 
 in a darkness like unto that of Egypt. The 
 Abate laughed as if it were the best of jokes. 
 He took J.'s hand and J. took mine, and 
 thus like three children we went laughing 
 down the stairway and along more passages, 
 and at last into a long refectory, at the farther 
 end of which was a lamp, while a door to one 
 side of that by which we entered opened, and a 
 second monk in white robes, holding a lighted 
 taper, came in, and when he saw us made a low 
 bow. As there were no other visitors, we were 
 to eat with him and his brother monk, the 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 79 
 
 Abate said ; and then he gave me the head of 
 the table, asking me if I were willing to be the 
 Lady Abbess. 
 
 If we had been two prodigals he could not 
 have been kinder than he was now he had 
 given us shelter. If we had been starving like 
 the hero of the parable, he could not have been 
 more anxious to set before us a feast of plenty. 
 Nor would any fatted calf have been more to 
 our taste than the substantial supper prepared 
 for us. We must eat, he said ; we needed it. 
 He had seen us coming up the hill as he 
 talked with a peasant by the roadside ; but 
 monsieur was push-pushing the velocipede and 
 looking at nothing else, and madame was pant- 
 ing and swinging her arms, staring straight in 
 front of her, and before he had time, we had 
 passed. We must drink too ; the wine was 
 good for us. We must not mix water with it ; 
 it was Christian, why then should it be bap- 
 tized ? The white-robed brother spoke little, 
 but he never allowed J.'s plate to remain empty. 
 When the meat w^as brought in we were joined 
 by Pirro, a good-sized dog with no tail to speak 
 of, and Lupo, an unusually large cat, and his 
 
8o Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 numerous family, who all had to be fed at inter- 
 vals. But even while Pirro jumped nimbly 
 into the air after pieces of bread thrown to him, 
 and Lupo scratched, and his progeny made 
 mournful appeals to be remembered, and we 
 talked, I looked every now and then down the 
 long narrow table to where it was lost in deep 
 shadow. The cloth was laid its entire length, 
 as if in readiness for the banished brothers 
 whenever they might return. I should not 
 have been surprised then to see the door open 
 to admit a procession of white-robed monks, 
 all with tapers in their hands. 
 
 The Abate must have realized that to a 
 stranger there was something uncanny in his 
 dark, silent, deserted monastery, and his last 
 word as he bade us good-night was, that we 
 were to fear nothing, and' sleep in peace. 
 
To 
 THE ABATE DI NEGRO, 
 
 Of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, 
 
 We would say a Word of Thanks for the Golden Days 
 
 passed in his House Beautiful, 
 
 and for 
 
 The Great Kindnesses show?t us ' in our farther 
 
 journeying. 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 
 
 " Biit^ oh^ what a favor is this 
 to me^ that yet I am admitted en- 
 trance here I " 
 
 ''''But they are to me golden 
 hours in which such things hap- 
 pen to me.'''' 
 
 T^HE days we spent at Monte Oliveto were 
 "^ golden days. For we not only slept 
 there one, but several nights, and the Abate 
 declared we could remain as long as we might 
 care to. Nothing could be more melancholy 
 and wild than the country into which we had 
 come. It is the most desolate part of all that 
 strange desolation which lies to the southeast 
 of Siena. The mountain on which the monas- 
 tery is built is surrounded on every side but 
 one by deep, abrupt ravines. Behind it rise 
 higher mountains, bare and bleak and gray, 
 like gigantic ash-piles, and on the very highest 
 peak is the wretched little village of Chiusure. 
 
 6 
 
82 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 The other hills around are lower, and from the 
 road by the convent gateway one can see 
 Siena, pale and blue on the horizon, and south- 
 ward, over the barren hill-tops, Monte Amiata. 
 But Monte Oliveto, with its gardens and or- 
 chards and vineyards, is a green place in the 
 midst of the barrenness. The mountain-sides 
 are terraced, and olives and vines grow almost 
 to the bottom of the ravine. It was said in old 
 times that the Bishop of Arezzo was com- 
 manded in a vision to call the monastery after 
 the Mount in Jerusalem. Now-a-days sceptics 
 say the trees on the terraces explain the name, 
 forgetting that in its beginning this hill was as 
 bare as the others. Why cannot it be believed, 
 for the legend's sake, that the oliv^es were 
 planted afterwards because of the namcf* 
 
 The first morning, the Abate took us to see 
 the frescos representing the life of Saint Bene- 
 dict, painted on the walls of the large cloister. 
 I will be honest, and confess that they disap- 
 pointed us. I doubt whether the artists were 
 very proud of them. Luca Signorelli, before 
 he had finished the first side of the cloister, 
 gave up the work, as it is not likely he would 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 83 
 
 have done had he cared much for it. Sodoma, 
 when he took his place, was at first so careless 
 that the then abbot took him to task, but the 
 artist calmly told him more could not be ex- 
 pected for the price that was paid him. Cer- 
 tainly with neither were these frescos a labor 
 of love, and this one feels at once. One won- 
 ders if this could have been the same Sodoma 
 who painted the Saint Sebastian in Florence, 
 and yet there is more charm in his pictures than 
 in those of SignorelH. But what we cared for 
 most were his portraits of himself, with heavy 
 hair hanging about his face, and wearing the 
 cloak the Milanese gentleman, turned monk, 
 had given him, and of his wife and child ; and 
 the pictures of the raven and the other pets 
 he brought with him to the monastery, to the 
 wonder of the good monks. It is a pity every 
 one cannot look at these frescos with such 
 loving, reverential eyes as the Abate. He had 
 shown them probably to hundreds of visitors ; 
 he had seen them almost every day for the 
 many years he had been at Monte Oliveto ; 
 but his pleasure in them was as fresh as if it 
 dated but from yesterday. He told the story 
 
84 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 of each in turn, — of how in this one the great 
 Saint Benedict had set the devil to flight, and 
 how in that he had by a miracle recalled an 
 erring brother ; and once he pointed to a palm- 
 tree in a background. Sodoma, he said, had 
 seen and admired a palm in the garden of the 
 monastery, and so, after his realistic fashion, 
 had painted it in just as he had his pets. That 
 very tree was in the garden still ; he would 
 show it to us if we liked. 
 
 There never was such another garden ! It 
 is close to the large brick house or palace by 
 the gateway, where in old times lay visitors 
 were lodged, and beyond which no woman was 
 ever allowed to pass. It is small, but in it the 
 monks only raised the rarest trees and plants. 
 Here grew the precious herbs out of which 
 in the pharmacy, whose windows overlook the 
 quiet green enclosure, they prepared the healing 
 draughts for which people came from far and 
 near. The pharmacy is closed now. There 
 is dust in the corners and on the quaint old 
 chairs. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. But 
 brass scales are still on the heavy wooden 
 counter, and pestle and mortar beliind it, and 
 

 
 6 ^ 
 
 > 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
Tzvo Pilgrims Progress. 85 
 
 glass retorts of strange shapes in the corners 
 and above the doors. Majolica jars all marked 
 with the three mountains, the cross, and the 
 olive-branch, — the stemma of the monastic or- 
 der, — are ranged on the brown shelves, many 
 of the large ones carefully sealed, w^hile from 
 the smaller come forth strange odors of myrrh 
 and incense and rare ointments. As in the 
 refectory, everything here is in order for the 
 monks when they return. But they will find 
 more change in the garden below. The rare 
 plants, the ebony and the hyssop, the cactuses 
 and the palm (which made us think less of 
 Sodoma's frescos than we had before), the 
 pomegranates and the artichokes, are all there. 
 But weeds grow in the paths, and by the old 
 gray well, and in among the herbs ; roses 
 have run riot in the centre of the garden and 
 turned it into a wild tangled growth. To us 
 it seemed the loveliest spot in Monte Oliveto. 
 The hours spent in it were like a beautiful 
 idyl of Theocritus or Shelley. The sun shone 
 and the air was filled with sweet spicy scents. 
 To one side was the gray mountain, to the 
 other dense cypresses, and above a blue, cloud- 
 
86 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 less sky. The roses were still in bloom, and 
 as we lingered there, the Abate went from 
 bush to bush and picked for me a large bunch 
 of fragrant buds. I hope if the monks ever 
 do come back that, while they throw open the 
 windows of the pharmacy and let the light 
 in again upon the majolica and the dark wood- 
 work, they will leave the gates of the garden 
 locked. It is fairer in its confusion than it 
 ever could be with weeded paths and well- 
 clipped bushes. 
 
 The Abate took us everywhere, — through 
 the empty guest-chambers of the palace to the 
 tower, now a home for pigeons, from the top 
 of which one has a wide view of the country, 
 which with its squares of olives and its gray 
 hills and fields marked by deep furrows, as if 
 by boundary lines, looks like a large map or 
 geological chart, — through the monastery, with 
 its three hundred rooms with now but three 
 monks to occupy them ; its cloisters, for there 
 are two besides the larc^e frescoed one ; its 
 loggie, where geraniums and other green plants 
 were growing; its great refectory, beyond the 
 door of which fowl or flesh meat never passed, 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 87 
 
 and which is now used no longer; and its 
 library, at the very top of the house, where 
 rows of white vellum volumes are ready for the 
 students who so seldom come. Then he led 
 us to the church, where there are more altars 
 than monks to pray before them, and a won- 
 derful choir with inlaid stalls ; and in and out 
 of little chapels, one of which contains the 
 grotto where blessed Bernardo Tolomei, the 
 founder of the order, lived for many years after 
 he came to the wilderness, while another was 
 the first church used by the brotherhood, and 
 the Virgin with angels playing to her on harps 
 and mandolins, above the altar, was painted 
 long before Signorelli and Sodoma began their 
 work. Then there was the lemon-grove to be 
 seen, where the Abate filled our pockets with 
 the ripe fruit which we were to keep, he said, 
 in case we might be thirsty on the road some 
 da}^ when there was no wine or water near by 
 to drink. And after that there was still to be 
 visited the wine-press, with its deep shadows 
 and dark corners and long subterranean pas- 
 sage to the room below, where men were filling 
 small casks from large butts, and then carrying 
 
88 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 them off on their shoulders to be weighed 
 and stored above. We had to taste the wine, 
 and I think it, together with the sunshine and 
 the flowers, must have gone to our heads that 
 morning and stayed there so long as we were at 
 Monte Oliveto, for everything about us seemed 
 to belong less to the actual world than to a 
 dreamland full of wonder and beauty, and 
 sometimes of pathos. 
 
 It was the same in the afternoon, when the 
 Abate had gone about his work, — for he is a 
 busy man, like the centurion with many under 
 him, — and J. and I wandered alone over the 
 gray hills up to Chiusure. Life with its hard- 
 ships must be real enough to the people of 
 this little village, in which seeds of pestilence 
 sown hundreds of years ago still bear the bitter 
 fruit of wretchedness. It seems as if the brick 
 walls which could not keep out the plague 
 have ever since successfully barred the way to 
 all prosperity, for generation after generation 
 is born within them but to live and die in 
 poverty. We saw melancholy figures there, — 
 old hags of women, with thin white hair and 
 bent almost double under heavy bundles of 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 89 
 
 wood, toiling up steep stony streets with bare 
 feet, and others crouching in the gloom oppo- 
 site open doorways. Even the little priest, 
 who, in his knee-breeches and long frock-coat 
 and braided smoking-cap with tassels dangling 
 in his eyes, was humorous enough to look at, 
 was pathetic in his way. For after he had 
 shown us his church with its decorations, poor 
 as the people who worship in it, and offered us 
 a glass of wine in his own parlor, he spread on 
 the table before us some broken pieces of glass 
 easily put together, on which a picture was 
 painted. Was it of value } he asked, so eagerly 
 that he told without further words the story of 
 wants but ill supplied. He was willing to sell 
 it, but he did not know what it was worth. 
 Could we tell him? No, we could not, we said, 
 for we really knew nothing about it, though we 
 feared the hopes he had set upon it would 
 never be realized. And then sadly he gathered 
 together the pieces and put them away again 
 in their newspaper wrapping. 
 
 It was more cheerful outside the gateway. 
 There, in the late afternoon, the gray olives by 
 the way were more clearly defined against the 
 
90 Tzvo Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 sky, and the gray ravines below more indistinct. 
 Beyond, the hills, now all purple and soft, rolled 
 away to the horizon and to the brilliant red 
 sky above. One or two lights were lit in dis- 
 tant farm-houses, and once we heard a far-off 
 bell. Before us the white road led by one 
 green hill on whose top was a circle of cy- 
 presses, and in its centre a black cross, as in 
 so many old pictures. 
 
 But the strangest part of this dream-life was 
 the friendship that sprung up between us and 
 the monks. I should not have been more sur- 
 prised if Saint Benedict and Blessed Bernardo 
 had come back to earth to make friends with 
 us. It was not only that the Abate acted as 
 our guide through the monastery, — this he 
 does for every visitor who comes, since the 
 Government took possession of it and turned 
 it into a public art-gallery and pension for 
 artists, — but he came to our room early in the 
 morning to drink his coffee with us, and in the 
 evening, after he had said his Office, for a little 
 talk. And when we had finished our supper 
 we sat together long over our wine, talking 
 now in French, now in English, now in Italian, 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 91 
 
 and occasionally understanding each other. 
 Like all good fellows, we too had our jokes. 
 But the Abates favorite was to tell how he had 
 seen us coming up the mountain, monsieur 
 push-pushing the velocipede and madame puff- 
 puffing behind him. Even Dom Giuseppe, 
 the other monk, — the third was away, — re- 
 laxed from the dignity with which he had first 
 met us, and took part in the talk and the 
 laughter. Unreal as seemed these late suppers 
 in the long refectory in the dim light, with 
 Pirro forever jumping after choice morsels, 
 while Lupo and his family growled with rage 
 and envy from under the table, we strayed even 
 farther into Wonderland the second day after 
 our arrival, when both monks went out for a 
 ride on the tricycle along the mulberry walk 
 and by Blessed Bernardo's grotto. 
 
 The last day of our stay a number of visitors 
 arrived, — a priest from Perugia, two nuns, and 
 two English ladies. They were not expected, 
 and dinner had to be prepared for them. The 
 Abate is never pleased when guests come with- 
 out giving him warning. When we met him 
 in the refectory a little after twelve, we could 
 
92 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 see his patience had been tried. We must par- 
 don him for being late, he said, but he had had 
 to find something to eat for all these people. 
 Were they to dine with us? we asked. No, 
 indeed, was his answer ; they were not mem- 
 bers of the community. This confirmed our 
 doubts as to whether we might not be monks 
 without knowing it; for the first morning the 
 Abate had given us a key of the great front 
 door by which we could let ourselves in at all 
 hours, without any ringing of bells or calling 
 of porters ; so that we felt as if we belonged to 
 the convent. These visitors were the thorns 
 in his present life, the Abate continued, and we 
 were his roses. Then he brought out a bot- 
 tle of the vino santo which he makes himself 
 and prizes so highly that he never sells it as 
 he does the other wines, and a plate of grapes 
 for which he had sent a great distance. And 
 when dinner was over he bade the servant put 
 all that was left of grapes and wine away. 
 They were for the community, and not for 
 common folk. He introduced us to the Pe- 
 rugian priest, who might possibly, he said, be 
 of use to us in Perugia. The latter almost 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 93 
 
 embraced J. in his protestations of good-will, 
 and came running back several times to press 
 his hand, and say in a French of his own in- 
 vention that we must call often during our stay 
 in his city. 
 
THROUGH THE WILDERNESS TO 
 A GARDEN. 
 
 " Now he bethought himself of set- 
 ting forward^ 
 
 " Here^ also, they had the city it- 
 self in view, and they thought they 
 heard all the bells therein to ring to 
 welcome them thereto.'''' 
 
 "^TL /"E left the monastery the next morning. 
 It took courage on our part ; but we 
 knew it was best to go quickly. Every day 
 we fell more under the dreamy influence of 
 the place and became less willing for action. 
 We must hasten from Monte Oliveto for the 
 very reason which led Blessed Bernardo to it, 
 — to flee temptation. The Abate was in our 
 room by half-past seven. Dom Giuseppe was 
 in the church saying Massi, but had sent his 
 farewells. He himself had not yet said Mass, 
 so he could not drink his coflee with us, but 
 he sat by while we had ours. We should not 
 reach San Quirico till noon, he feared, and we 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 95 
 
 must have something in our pockets to eat in 
 the mean time; and he went to his room and 
 came back with two cakes. He brought be- 
 sides two letters he had written introducing 
 us to monks at San Pietro in Perugia. Then 
 he came downstairs and out to the stable, 
 though he was fasting, and the morning was 
 wet and cloudy and cold. We did not get 
 on the tricycle at once. We remembered the 
 road too well. The Abate walked by our side, 
 now and then patting J. on the back and call- 
 ing him affectionately "Giuseppe, Giuseppe;" 
 and he kept with us until, at some little dis- 
 tance from the gateway, we mounted the ma- 
 chine. After he had said good-by, he stood 
 quietly watching us. Then there came a turn 
 in the road which hid him from us, and when 
 we saw him again he was walking on the foot- 
 path below the cypresses, with two little boys 
 who had come out with him. He was on his 
 way to take Dom Giuseppe's place at the altar. 
 And then we went on sadly, for we knew we 
 should not come to another resting-place where 
 there was such perfect relief for pilgrims that 
 are weary and faint in the way. 
 
96 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 As the road was difficult going up, so was 
 it dangerous coming down, and again we had 
 to walk. To add to our discomfort, before 
 long it began to rain, and it was so cold we 
 had to blow on our fingers to keep them warm. 
 During the night it had snowed on the far 
 mountain-ranges. Beyond Buonconvento, when 
 we returned to the post-road we went fast 
 enough ; but only for a while. There were 
 more mountains to cross, up which J. could 
 not go very fast because of the burden, or 
 knapsack, that was on his back. Out of very 
 shame I took my share in pushing and pull- 
 ing the tricycle. Once or twice we had long 
 coasts ; but in places the road was sandy, and 
 in descending wound as often as a small St. 
 Gothard railway. Coasting would have been 
 too great a risk, especially as I never could 
 back-pedal going down hill, though on up- 
 grades J. but too often complained that, like 
 Dante on the hillside, my firm foot ever was 
 the lower. 
 
 The way still lay between and over hills of 
 chalk, and we rode for miles through monoto- 
 nous barrenness. It rained at intervals, but 
 
-^^^ 
 
 ^ ly^H ^\ '^- f\ 
 
 
 
 At the Foot of the Cross. 
 
 ^ap-e 96. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 97 
 
 at times the sun almost broke through the 
 clouds that followed it in long gray sweeps 
 from the white masses on the snow-capped 
 mountains bounding the horizon. To our 
 right, Monte Amiata, bare and rugged, and 
 with white top, was always in sight ; and once 
 above it the clouds rolled away leaving a broad 
 stretch of greenish blue sky. There were 
 many crosses by the wayside, and they were 
 different from any we had yet seen. On each, 
 over spear and sponge and crown of thorns, 
 was a black cock, rudely carved to look as if it 
 crowed. Just before we came to San Quirico, 
 and towards noon, we saw at the foot of one of 
 these crosses an old weary-looking peasant, with 
 head bowed as if he listened for the Angelus. 
 
 We were prepossessed against San Quirico 
 before we reached it. Olives with vines hang- 
 ing from them in defiance of Virgil, brown 
 fields, and red and yellow trees, could not 
 reconcile us to the long climb up the moun- 
 tain. It was worth our trouble, however, if 
 only to see the cathedral. We left the tricycle 
 at the trattoria, and at our leisure looked at 
 the portal and its pillars, with quaintly carved 
 
98 Two Pilgrims' Progress. 
 
 capitals of animals and birds, and at those 
 others, joined together with a Celtic-Kke twist 
 and resting on leopards, and then at the two 
 sea-monsters above. And while we wondered 
 at the grotesque gargoyles on the walls, and 
 the two figures for columns, and the lions on 
 the south doorway, two carabinieri from a 
 neighboring window examined us as if we were 
 equal curiosities. This fine building is an in- 
 congruity in San Quirico, which — for our first 
 impressions proved right — is at best but a 
 poor place. We were cheated in it as we had 
 never been before. When we went back to 
 the trattoria four men were eating their dinner 
 inside the fireplace in the kitchen. But we 
 were ushered into what I suppose was the best 
 room. It was dining-room and bed-chamber 
 combined. On one side was a long table, on 
 the other the bed. The dressing-table served 
 as buffet, and the padrona brought from its 
 drawers the cheese and apples for our dessert. 
 In the garden below — for we were in the 
 second story — weeds like corn grew so tall 
 that they shaded the window. What happened 
 in that room, and the difference that arose 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 99 
 
 between the padrona and ourselves, are facts 
 too unpleasant to recall. But I am sure the 
 next foreigners who went to San Quirico heard 
 woful tales of the evil doings of the two Inglesi 
 who came on a velocipede. 
 
 After San Quirico there was the same bar- 
 renness, and only indifferent roads over rolling 
 country. Until within half a mile of Pienza, 
 where the hedges began again, not a tree grew 
 by the roadside, and the only signs of vegeta- 
 tion were the reeds in the little dark pools 
 dotting the gray fields. It was still bitterly 
 cold, and my fingers tingled on the handles. 
 Once we passed a farm-house where a solitary 
 woman watched a herd of black swine, and 
 once we met the diligence ; that was all. 
 
 We rode into Pienza, though our way lay to 
 one side of it. But we were curious to see the 
 cathedrals and palaces Pius II. built there in 
 the vain hope of turning his native village into 
 an important town. Of all the follies of proud 
 popes, I think this was the greatest. A^ well 
 might he have hoped by his single effort to 
 cover the creta, or chalk, with roses, as to raise 
 a prosperous city in its midst. We saw the 
 
lOO Tzuo Pilzrims^ Proo-ress. 
 
 great brown buildings marked with the fine 
 crescents of the Piccolomini and the papal 
 tiara and keys, as out of place in Pienza as the 
 cathedral seemed in San Quirico ; we looked 
 closer at the old stone well and its beautiful 
 wrought-iron work. J. made a sketch of a fine 
 courtyard, and then we were on the road again. 
 Near Montepulciano we came to a thickly 
 wooded country, riding for several miles be- 
 tween chestnuts and oaks. There were open 
 places, too, from which we saw far below the 
 fair Val di Chiana, and in the distance Lake 
 Thrasymene, pale and silvery, and close by 
 olive-gardens, through whose gray branches 
 we looked at the purple mountains and their 
 snowy summits. Above were broad spaces of 
 bright sky, for the dark clouds were rolling 
 away beyond the lake, and those that floated 
 around Monte Amiata were now glistening 
 and white. We had left the wilderness for a 
 garden. All the bells rang out as if in wel- 
 come when, after working up the long road, so 
 winding that at times the city was completely 
 hidden, we wheeled into the now dark and cold 
 streets of Montepulciano. 
 
WE ARE DETAINED.-mi>MMTfiviV;i^ 
 PULCIANO. 
 
 " They were therefore here in evil 
 case, and were far frotn friends and 
 acqMainta?tces y 
 
 " Why, truly, I do not know 
 what had become of me there, had 
 not Evangelist happily 7net ine.^'' 
 
 TT was in this high hill town that one of the 
 "*- pilgrims fell by the way. For two days 
 J. was too ill to ride, and we feared our pil- 
 grimage had come to an end. We stayed at 
 the Albergo Marzocco. It was on the fifth 
 floor of an old palace, and the entrance was 
 through the kitchen. The padrone and his 
 family were very sociable. Almost immedi- 
 ately his wife wanted to know the trade of the 
 Signore. " Ah ! an artist. Ecco me ! I am a 
 washerwoman ! " 
 
 She was also cook. From the dinino^-room 
 we could watch her as she prepared our meals. 
 
I02 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 When she kept us waiting too long we had 
 only to step into the kitchen and stand over 
 her until .the. dish we had ordered was ready. 
 We could look too into an adjacent room 
 whej«e during .our * stay one daughter of the 
 house forever ironed table-cloths, while a second 
 added up endless accounts. 
 
 But friendly as these people were, they were 
 stupid. The padrone had a pizzicheria, or 
 pork-shop, across the street. When anything 
 was wanted at the Albergo it was brought 
 from the shop. Every time I went to my 
 window I saw messengers on their way be- 
 tween the two establishments. But no man 
 can serve two masters; the pizzicheria drove 
 a more thriving trade, and the Albergo suffered 
 in consequence. It was left in the charge of 
 a youth of unparalleled stupidity, who seldom 
 understood what we asked for, and when he 
 did, declared it something not to be had. But 
 a friend was sent to us in our need. 
 
 It happened in this way. The first morning 
 we went out for a walk. As we started, and 
 were passing the palace with the Etruscan in- 
 scriptions on the heavy stones of its lower wall, 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 103 
 
 a Harlequin newly painted in red and white 
 struck nine from a house-top near by. In the 
 Via deir Erbe women, their heads covered 
 with gay handkerchiefs or wide-brimmed, high- 
 crowned felt hats, were selling vegetables and 
 fruit. Just in front of us, w^alking hand in 
 hand, were three beggars, two blind and one 
 lame, and an old brown monk with a wine- 
 cask on his shoulder. At almost every turn we 
 saw through an archway the three far-away 
 lakes of Montepulciano, Chiusi, and Thrasy- 
 mene. But it was now J. began to feel ill, 
 and we went to a caff^ and called for cognac. 
 As w^e sat there the door opened and a 
 young Italian dressed a VAnglaise, even to his 
 silver-headed cane, came in. He took a seat 
 at the table next to us. When his coffee was 
 brought he asked the waiter if he had seen 
 the English lady and gentleman who arrived, 
 the evening before on a velocipede. No, the 
 waiter had not ; he knew nothing of these for- 
 eigners. There was a pause, while the young 
 Italian sipped his coffee. But presently he 
 turned to us and said in good English, but 
 with a marked accent : — 
 
I04 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 " I beg pardon, sare, but was it not you who 
 came to Montepulciano on a tricycle ? " 
 
 " Yes," said J., but rather curtly, for he was 
 just then very miserably. 
 
 "Ah, I thought so!" continued the Italian, 
 well satisfied with the answer. " I have seen it, 
 — a Humber. It is a beautiful machine. I 
 myself do ride a bicycle, — the Speecial Cloob, 
 You know it? I do belong to the Cyclists' 
 Touring Cloob and to the Speedvell Clood, All 
 the English champions do belong to that Clood. 
 I did propose some one for director at the 
 last meeting; you will see my name on that 
 account in the papers. Here is my card, but 
 in the country around Montepulciano all call 
 me Sandro or Sandrino. I have ridden from 
 Florence to Montepulciano in one day. I 
 have what you call the wheel fever," — and he 
 smiled apologetically and stopped, but only to 
 take breath. 
 
 We were fellow-cyclers, and that was enough. 
 He was at once our friend, though our greet- 
 ing in return was not enthusiastic, and our 
 record would have disgusted the Spccdvcll 
 Cloob. He could sympathize. He was feeling 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress, 105 
 
 vary bad himself, because the day before he 
 had gone on his bicycle as far as Montalcino 
 with a gun to keel the leetle birds. It was too 
 far even for a champion. But he had taken 
 the waters — Janos : he had great faith in the 
 waters. 
 
 The cognac by this time had made J. bet- 
 ter, and we started to leave the caff^e. San- 
 drino, to give him his Montepulciano name, 
 insisted on paying for everything. We must 
 let him have that favor, he said, and also an- 
 other. He was not a native of the town, — he 
 was a Roman, as he supposed we could see by 
 his nose, — but still he would like to do us the 
 honors of the place. He would take us to see 
 so fine a church we could not but be pleased 
 with it; it was only a step. Foolishly we 
 went. The step was a long one. It took us 
 half-way down the mountain-side to the Ma- 
 donna di San Biagio. But J. was now really 
 too wretched to look at anything, and we 
 turned back at once. As we walked slowly 
 up again, Sandrino explained that he had lived 
 in England several years; and it turned out 
 that he had the English as well as the wheel 
 
io6 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 fever. All his clothes were from London, he 
 said, even his flannels ; and he pulled down his 
 sleeve that we might see. He smoked Eng- 
 lish tobacco, — a friend sent it to him ; and he 
 showed us the small paper box tied with a 
 string in which he kept it. And most of his 
 news was English, too. His friends wrote 
 him. He had just had a letter — see — and he 
 opened it. There had been fearful riots in 
 England. He cared much for the politics of 
 the country. But the refrain of all he said was 
 praise of cycling. He offered to ride with us 
 when we left Montepulciano. He could go 
 any day but the next, which was his twenty- 
 first birthday, when he was to have a great 
 dinner and many friends and much wine. He 
 would call, if we would allow him ; and with 
 profession of great friendship he left us at the 
 door of the Albergo. 
 
 He was true to his word. Indeed, I do not 
 know what had become of us but for his 
 kindness. After our return from our walk, J. 
 was unable to leave his room. We were 
 both depressed by this unlooked-for delay, and 
 Sandrino not only helped to amuse, but was of 
 

 
 
 
 < 
 
 H 
 O 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 107 
 
 practical use to us. He came twice the follow- 
 ing day. The first time he stopped, he said, to 
 tell us he did hear from friends in Castiglione 
 del Lago, who, if we should ride to-morrow, 
 would be glad to see us at lunch. " There will 
 be nothing much," he concluded; "they will 
 make no preparations. It will be some leetle 
 thing." Though in the first glory of his 
 twenty-one years, he went with me to a drug- 
 gist's to act as interpreter. But I think he 
 was repaid by his pleasure in carrying back a 
 bottle of his favorite waters. The boy, when 
 he saw it, with his usual cleverness followed 
 into the room bringing three glasses. If we 
 had asked for three he doubtless would have 
 brought one. Sandrino's second visit was in 
 the evening after he had eaten his great dinner 
 and drunk much wine, which had again made 
 him feel vary bad. Had we ever tasted the 
 famous Montepulciano, " king of all wine " } he 
 asked. No .f* Well, then, we must before leav- 
 ing the town. It was not to be had anywhere 
 else, and indeed even in Montepulciano could 
 not be bought in the caff^e or shops. He had 
 been presented with many bottles. 
 
io8 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 He repeated his invitation to lunch in Cas- 
 tiglione, and it seemed that other friends in a 
 villa near Cortona would also be charmed to 
 see us, and to give us wine if we were tired. 
 
IN THE VAL Dl CHIANA. 
 
 " Thy company^ O sweet Evan- 
 gelist^ how desirable it is to us poor 
 pilgrims.''^ 
 
 " Then I saw in 7ny dream they 
 went very lovingly on together.'''' 
 
 T^HE next morning J. was much better, and 
 "*■ we decided to ride. Sandrino arrived 
 at half-past seven and breakfasted with us. 
 In the uniform of the Speedvell Cloob, its 
 monogram in silver on his cap, he was even 
 more English than he had been the day be- 
 fore. Our last experience at the Albergo was 
 characteristic. The waiter, overcome by San- 
 drino's appearance, became incapable of action. 
 We called for our coffee and rolls in vain. 
 Finally we all, our guest included, made a 
 descent upon the kitchen and forced him to 
 bestir himself. 
 
 It was Sunday morning, and the news of our 
 going had been noised abroad. The aristocracy 
 
I lo Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 as well as the people turned out to see us off. 
 Many of Sandrino's friends lingered in the 
 barber-shop across the street ; others waited 
 just without the city gate with his mother and 
 sister. When Sandrino saw the crowd here, 
 he sprang upon his Speecial Cloob, worked with 
 one foot and waved the other in the air, rode 
 io the little park beyond and back, and then 
 jumped off, hat in hand, at his mother's side, 
 with the complacent smile of a champion. 
 Indeed, the whole ride that day savored of the 
 circus. He went down hills with his legs 
 stretched straight out on either side. On level 
 places he made circles and fancy figures in the 
 road. Whenever we passed peasants, — and 
 there were many going to church, — he shrieked 
 a warning shrill as a steam-engine whistle. No 
 wonder he said he had no use for a bell ! He 
 spoke to all the women, calling them his 
 "beautiful cousins." And in villages the noise 
 he made was so great that frightened people, 
 staring at him, could not look behind, so that 
 several times we all but rode over men and 
 women who walked backward right into our 
 wheels. And all the while J., like the ring- 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 1 1 1 
 
 master, kept calling and shrieking, and no one 
 paid the least attention to him. 
 
 Our way was through the beautiful Val di 
 Chiana, no longer pestilential and full of stenches 
 as in Dante's day, but fresh and fair, and in 
 places sweet with clematis. There were no 
 fences or hedges, and it stretched from moun- 
 tains to mountains, one wide lovely park. 
 About half-way to Castiglione we came to the 
 boundary line between Tuscany and Umbria, — 
 a canal with tall poplars on its banks, throwing 
 long reflections into the water below, where a 
 boat lay by the reeds. We stopped there some 
 little time. Sandrino was polite, but I could 
 see he did not approve. What would the 
 Speedvell Cloob have thought? Farther on, 
 when we waited again near a low farm-house 
 under the oaks, he wheeled quickly on. But 
 presently he came back. " Oh," he said, " I 
 thought you must have had an accident ! " 
 
 There could be no lovelier lake town than 
 Castiglione del Lago. The high hill on which 
 it stands projects far into Lake Thrasymene. 
 The olives which grow from its walls down the 
 hillside into the very water are larger and finer, 
 
1 1 2 Two PilgriTHs Progress. 
 
 with more strangely twisted trunks, than any 
 I have ever seen. As we came near the town 
 we rode between them, looking beneath their 
 silvery-gray branches out to the pale blue lake 
 beyond. A woman came from under their 
 shade with a bundle of long reeds on her head; 
 a priest passed us on a donkey. 
 
 We left our machines in a stable at the foot 
 of the hill and walked through the streets. 
 Here Sandrino's invitation came to nought ; 
 his friends were away. Whatever leetle thing 
 we had must be found elsewhere. So we went 
 to a trattoria, where another of his friends, 
 a serious, polite young man who, we learned 
 afterwards, owns the town and all the country 
 thereabout, sat and talked with us while we 
 ate our lunch. Poor Sandrino ! He had to 
 pay for his English clothes and foreign friends ! 
 The padrona, backed by her husband from the 
 kitchen below, asked him no less than five 
 francs for our macaroni and wine. A dispute, 
 loud because of the distance between the dis- 
 putants, followed; but in the end Sandrino 
 paid four francs, though half that sum would 
 have been enough. It was some consolation 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 1 1 3 
 
 for us to know that, forestieri as we were, we 
 had never been cheated so outrageously, not 
 even in San Quirico. 
 
 It was pleasant wandering through the town, 
 with the grave young man as guide, to the 
 Palazzo Communale, where the red and white 
 flag of the Duke of Cornia waving outside was 
 the same as that painted in the old frescos 
 within, and where councilmen holding council 
 bowed to us as we passed ; and then to the old 
 deserted castle which, with its gray battlemented 
 walls and towers, was not unlike an English 
 ruin. But it was pleasanter when, Sandrino 
 having kissed his friend, we were on the road 
 again, riding between yellow mulberries by 
 the side of the lake. Sheep were grazing on 
 the grassy banks ; donkeys and oxen were at 
 rest in the meadows. But the peasants. Mass 
 heard, were at work again. Women on lad- 
 ders were stripping the mulberries of their 
 leaves ; men on their knees were digging in 
 the fields. 
 
 At the villa, Sandrino's friends were at home. 
 At the gate the gay bicycler gave his war-cry. 
 A young lady ran out between the roses and 
 
 8 
 
114 Two Pilgrims' Progress. 
 
 chrysanthemums in the garden and by the red 
 wall where yellow pumpkins were sunning, to 
 welcome him. Then her mother and sister 
 came and also gave him greeting. They re- 
 ceived us with courtesy. We were led into the 
 drawing-room, a bare, barn-like place with cold 
 brick floor, where there were three or four 
 chairs, a table, an old piano, faded cretonne 
 curtains hung on rough sticks at the windows, 
 and small drawings pinned on the walls. A 
 man in blue coat and trousers, such as the 
 peasants wear, followed us in and sat down by 
 the young ladies. He was one of her men, the 
 Signora explained. Then we had the wine 
 Sandrino promised, and we became very 
 friendly. One of the daughters knew a little 
 English, but when we spoke to her she hid her 
 face in her hands and laughed and blushed. 
 She never, never would dare to say a word 
 before us, she declared. She was very arch 
 and girlish. One minute she played a waltz 
 on the piano; the next she teased Sandrino, 
 and there was much pleasantry between them. 
 The mother spoke French after a fashion, but 
 when she had anything to say she relapsed into 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 1 1 5 
 
 Italian. She lived in Rome, she said. We 
 must come and see her there. But would we 
 not now stay at her villa all night, instead of 
 in Cortona? Then she squeezed my hand. 
 " VoMs etes bien sympathique',' she said, and I 
 think she meant to compliment me. Her 
 husband, it seems, was a banker in Rome, 
 and would be pleased, so she told us through 
 Sandrino's interpretation, to do anything and 
 everything for us. 
 
 Mother and daughters, men and maids, all 
 walking amiably together, came to the garden 
 gate with us. The Signora here squeezed 
 my hand a second time. The skittish young 
 lady said " good-by " and then hid behind a 
 bush, and her sister gave us each some roses. 
 It was here too we were to part with Sandrino. 
 He must be back in Montepulciano by six ; 
 more friends were coming. Would we write 
 him postal cards to tell him of the distance and 
 time we made? And that map of Tuscany we 
 said we would give him, would we not remem- 
 ber it? He was going to take some great 
 rides, and it would help him. Then we turned 
 one way, and he, riding his best for the 
 
1 1 6 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 young ladies, the other, to be seen by us no 
 more. 
 
 It was roses all the way to Cortona. They 
 grew in villa gardens and along the road up 
 the mountain ; there were a few even among 
 the olives, on the terraces whose stone embank- 
 ments make the city from below look as if it 
 were surrounded by many walls instead of one 
 only. Near the town we met two young lovers, 
 their arms around each other's waists, and a 
 group of men who directed us in our search 
 for the inn up a short steep hill leading away 
 from the main road. Above, inside the city 
 gate, several other citizens told us we must go 
 down again, for the road we had left led right 
 by the door. Clearly the Albergo della Stella 
 — for that was its name — was not well known 
 in Cortona. After a climb of three miles it was 
 provoking to go even a foot out of our way, 
 and we turned back in no cheerful mood. It 
 was more disheartening when, having finally 
 come to the Albergo, we found the lower floor, 
 by which we entered, the home of pigs and 
 donkeys and oxen. The major was right, I 
 thought ; Cortona was a rough place. The 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 117 
 
 contrast when on the third floor of this estab- 
 lishment we were shown into a large, clean, 
 really well-furnished room with window over- 
 looking the valley, made us neglect to drive 
 a close bargain with the padrona, — a neglect 
 for which we suffered later. 
 
LUCA SIGNORELLI'S TOWN. 
 
 " By this time the pilgrifns had a 
 desi7-e to go forward,'''' 
 
 nnHE principal event of our stay in Cortona 
 "*• was a hunt for Luca Signorelli's house. 
 Why we were so anxious to find it I did not 
 know then, nor do I now; but we were very 
 earnest about it. At the start a youth 
 pursued us with the persistence of a govern- 
 ment spy. It was useless to try and dodge 
 him. No matter how long we were in 
 churches or by what door we came out, he 
 was always waiting in exactly the right place. 
 In our indignation we would not ask him 
 the way, but we did of some other boys, who 
 forthwith led us such a wild-goose chase 
 that I think before it was over there was 
 not a street or corner of the town unvisited 
 by us. 
 
i'^]mm 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 119 
 
 We next employed an old man as guide. 
 Of course he knew all about Luca Signorelli. 
 He could show us all his frescos and pictures 
 in Cortona. Some of them were bad enough, 
 as he supposed the Signore knew; they were 
 painted in the artist's youth. But we wanted 
 to see his house '^. Ah ! we had but to follow 
 him, and he led us in triumph to that of Pietro 
 da Cortona. As this would not do, he con- 
 sulted with an old woman, who recommended 
 a visit to a certain padre. The padre was 
 in his kitchen. He had never heard of 
 Signorelli's house, and honestly admitted his 
 ignorance. But could he show us some fine 
 frescos or sell us antiquities? This failing, 
 our guide hunted for some friends who, he 
 declared, knew everything. But they were not 
 in their shop, nor in the caff^e, nor on the 
 piazza, and in despair he took us to see another 
 priest. The latter wore a jockey-cap and gog- 
 gles, and was a learned man. He had heard 
 of a life of Signorelli by a German. He had 
 never read it, nor indeed could he say where 
 it was to be had ; but he knew there was such 
 a book. He was certain our hunt was useless, 
 
I20 Two Pilgrims Progjrss, 
 
 since Signorelli had lived in so many houses 
 the city could not afford to put tablets on them 
 all, and so not one was marked. He him- 
 self was a professional letter-writer, and if the 
 Signore had any letters he wished written — ? 
 We then gave up the search and dismissed 
 the old man with a franc, though he declared 
 himself still willing to continue it. It was in 
 this way we saw Cortona. 
 
 For the last few days we had begun to be 
 haunted by the fear of the autumn rains. If 
 they were as bad as Virgil says, and were to 
 fall in dense sheets, tearing the crops up by 
 the roots, while black whirlwinds set the stub- 
 ble flying, and vast torrents filled ditches and 
 raised rivers, the roads must certainly be made 
 unridable. Since the morning we left Monte 
 Oliveto the weather had been threatening, and 
 now in Cortona there were heavy showers. As 
 we sat in our room at the Albergo after our 
 long tramp, and J. made a sketch from the 
 window, we saw dark clouds gradually cover 
 the sky. The lake, so blue yesterday, was 
 gray and dull. The valley and the mountains 
 were in shadow, save where the sun breaking 
 
Two Pilgrims^ Progress. 121 
 
 through the clouds shone on a small square 
 of olives and spread a golden mist over Monte 
 Amiata. Before J. had finished, the gold 
 faded into white and then deepened into pur- 
 ple, and we determined to be off early in the 
 morning. 
 
TO PERUGIA: BY TRAIN AND 
 TRICYCLE. 
 
 " Now you must note that the 
 City stood upon a 7?iighty hill, but 
 the pilgrims went up that hill with 
 ease?'' 
 
 nr^HE next day I was tired and in no humor 
 -*• for riding. J. wanted once to try the 
 tricycle without luggage over the Italian roads. 
 It was settled then between us that I should 
 go alone by train to Perugia, where we should 
 meet. Before seven we had our breakfast and 
 the padrona brought us her bill. Because we 
 had not bargained in the beginning she over- 
 charged us for everything; but we refused to 
 pay more than we knew was her due. There 
 was the inevitable war of words, more unpleas- 
 ant than usual because her voice was loud and 
 harsh and asthmatic. She grew tearful before 
 it was over, but finally thanked us for what 
 we gave her, and asked us to come again so 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress. 123 
 
 gently that we mistrusted her. I thought it 
 wise to wait with the bags at the station, 
 though my train would not start till eleven. 
 
 It was a beautiful coast down the mountain 
 between the olives, four miles with feet up. 
 The clouds had rolled away during the night, 
 and it was bright and warm at the station 
 when J. left me to go on his way. It was 
 quiet too, and for some time I was alone with 
 the porters. But presently a young woman 
 with a child in her arms came by. She stopped 
 and looked at me sympathetically. I spoke to 
 her, and then she came nearer and patted me 
 on the shoulder and said, " Poverina !'' It 
 seems she had seen J. bring me to the 
 station and then turn back by himself. I do 
 not know what she thought was the trouble, 
 but she felt sorry for me. She was the wife 
 of the telegraph operator, and lived in rooms 
 above the station. She took me to them, and 
 then she brought me an illustrated translation 
 of " Gil Bias " to look at while she made me a 
 cup of coffee. Every few minutes she sighed 
 and said again, " Poverina I " She gave me 
 her card, — Elena Olas, nata Bocci, was her 
 
124 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 name. I wrote mine on a slip of paper, and 
 when the train, only an hour late, came, we 
 parted with great friendship. 
 
 A regiment of soldiers was on its way to 
 Perugia and made the journey very lively. 
 Peasants who had somehow heard of its com- 
 ing were in wait at every station with apples 
 and chestnuts and wine, over which there was 
 much noisy bargaining. At other times the 
 soldiers sang. As the train carried us by the 
 lake from which the mountains in the distance 
 rose white and shadowy and phantom-like, 
 and by Passignano, — built right in the water, 
 with reeds instead of flowers around the houses, 
 where fishermen were out in their boats near 
 the weirs, — and then by Maggiore and Ellora 
 on their hill-tops, I heard the constant refrain 
 of the soldiers' song, and it reminded me of my 
 friend at Cortona, for it was a plaintive regret 
 for " Poverina mia ! " Then there came a 
 pause in the singing, and a voice called out, 
 *' Ecco, Perugia ! " I looked from the carriage 
 window, and there, far above on the mountain, 
 I saw it, white and shining, like a beautiful city 
 of the sun. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 125 
 
 At the station J. met me. He had been 
 waiting an hour, having made the thirty-six 
 miles between Cortona and Perugia in three 
 hours and a half. He too had had his adven- 
 tures. Beyond Passignano he met a man on 
 foot who spoke to him, and to whom he said, 
 " Buon Giornoy " Good-morning," cried the 
 man in good cockney English, and J. in 
 sheer astonishment stopped the tricycle. The 
 tramp — for tramp he was — explained that he 
 was an Englishman and in a bad way. He 
 had been at Perugia with a circus which had 
 little or no success, and the rascally French- 
 man who managed it had broken up and made 
 off, leaving him with nothing. He was now 
 on his way to Florence, where he wanted to be 
 taken on by Prince Strozzi, who kept English 
 jockeys. But in the mean time he was hun- 
 gry and had no money, and must tramp it all 
 the way. J. bethought him of the card to the 
 gentleman of Cortona who had married an 
 English wife. We had not used it, and it 
 seemed a pity to waste it. The English lady 
 doubtless would be glad of an opportunity 
 to help a countryman. So he gave it to the 
 
126 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 tramp, together with a franc for his immediate 
 wants. The latter looked at the money. He 
 supposed he could do something with it, he 
 grumbled. He really was grateful, however, 
 for he offered to push the machine up a hill 
 down which he had just walked. But J. tell- 
 ing him to hurry on, engaged instead the servi- 
 ces of a small boy who was going his way. For 
 pay, he gave the child a coast down the other 
 side into his native village, than which soldi 
 could not have been sweeter. Did not all his 
 playmates see him ride by in his pride ? 
 
 Arriving in Perugia, J. himself was a hero 
 for a time. Many officers with their wives 
 were in the station, and in their curiosity so 
 far forgot their usual dignity as to surround 
 him and pester him with questions as to his 
 whence and whither and what speed he could 
 make. 
 
 It is a long way from the station up the 
 mountain to the town, but we went faster than 
 we ever climbed mountain before, for we tied 
 the tricycle to the back of the diligence. J. 
 rode and steered it, but I sat inside, ending my 
 day's journey as I had begun it, in common- 
 
'''i- 
 
 
 m m \ 
 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 127 
 
 place fashion. The driver was full of admira- 
 tion. We must go to Terni on our velocipede, 
 he said ; in the mountains beyond Spoleto we 
 should go down-hill for seven miles. Ecco I 
 no need of a diligence then! 
 
AT PERUGIA. 
 
 ^^ And did see such things there ^ 
 the retnei7ibrance of which will 
 stick by 7ne as long as I livey 
 
 nnHE padrone of the Albergo at Perugia 
 -■- was a man of parts. He could speak 
 English. When we complimented him on a 
 black cat which was always in his office, he 
 answered, with eyes fixed on vacancy, and 
 pausing between each word like a child saying 
 its lesson : " Yes-it-is-a-good-cat. I-have- 
 one-dog-and-four-cats. This-cat-is-the-fath- 
 er-of-the-oth-er-cats. One-are-red-and-three 
 -is-white." And when we had occasion to thank 
 him, he knew enough to tell us we were very 
 much obliged. 
 
 But we gave him small chance to display 
 his powers. There was little to keep us in the 
 Albergo, when, after a few minutes' walk we 
 could be in the piazza, where the sun shone on 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 129 
 
 Pisano's fountain, and on the Palazzo of the 
 BagHoni and the Duomo opposite. But what 
 a fall was there ! A couple of gendarmes, 
 priests walking two by two, a few beggars, 
 were the only people we saw in this broad 
 piazza, where at one time men and women, 
 driven to frenzy by the words of Saint Bernar- 
 dino, spoken from the pulpit by the Duomo 
 door, almost fell into the fire they had kindled 
 to burn their false hair and ornaments, their 
 dice and cards ; and where at another Bag- 
 Honi fought, with the young Raphael looking 
 on to paint later one at least of the comba- 
 tants ; and where the beautiful Grifonetto lay 
 in death agony, the avengers of his murdered 
 kinsmen waiting to see him die, the heads of 
 his fellow-assassins looking grimly down from 
 the Palazzo walls, and Atalanta, his mother, 
 giving him forgiveness for the deed, for which 
 but yesterday she had cursed him. In the aisles 
 of the Duomo, once so stained with the blood of 
 the Baglioni that they had to be purified with 
 wine before prayers could again be offered in 
 them, a procession of white-robed priests and 
 acolytes, bearing cross and censer, passed from 
 
 9 
 
130 Two Pilgrims Pivgress. 
 
 one chapel to another before a congregation 
 of two or three old women. It was the same 
 in the narrow streets; all is now still and 
 peaceful where of old Baglioni, single-handed, 
 kept back the forces of Oddi, their mortal foes. 
 Only the memory of their fierceness remains ; 
 though I have two friends who say that in the 
 dark street behind the Palazzo, where brave 
 Simonetto and Astore fought the enemy until 
 corpses lay in piles around them, they one 
 night heard voices singing sadly, as if in 
 lamentation ; and these voices led them on- 
 wards under one archway and then another 
 until suddenly the sounds ceased. But when 
 they turned to go homewards, lo ! they had 
 lost their way. The next morning they re- 
 turned that they might by daylight see whence 
 the music could have come. But all along the 
 street was a dead wall. None but spirits could 
 have sung there ; and what spirits would dare to 
 lift their voices in this famous street but those 
 of Baglioni } 
 
 It must be the degeneracy of modern w^ar- 
 riors that sets these heroes of the old school 
 to singing lamentations. The Grifonettos and 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 131 
 
 Astores who feasted on blood, could they 
 come back to life and their native town, would 
 have little sympathy with the captains and 
 colonels who now drink tamarind-water in the 
 caff^e, booted and spurred though the latter be. 
 The caffe is everywhere the lounging-place 
 of Italian officers, but in Perugia it seemed to 
 be their headquarters. There was one on the 
 Corso, a few doors from the Palazzo, which 
 they specially patronized. They were there 
 in the morning even before the shops were 
 opened, and again at noon, and yet again in 
 the evening, while at other times they walked 
 to and fro in front of it, as if on guard. But 
 though the youngest as well as the oldest pat- 
 ronized it, the distinctions of rank between 
 them were observed as scrupulously as Dickens 
 says they are with the Chatham and Rochester 
 aristocracy. The colonel associated with noth- 
 ing lower than a major, the latter in turn draw- 
 ing the line at the captain, and so it went 
 down to the third lieutenant, who lorded it 
 only over the common soldier. On the whole, 
 I think the lesser officers had the best of it ; 
 for whether they eat cakes and drank sweet 
 
132 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 drinks, or played cards, they were always 
 sociable and merry. Whereas, sometimes the 
 colonel sat solitary in his grandeur, silent 
 except for the few words with the boy selling 
 matches as he hunted through the stock to 
 find a box with a pretty picture. 
 
 We were long enough in Perugia to carry 
 the Abates letters to San Pietro. The monks 
 to whom they were written were away, but a 
 third came in their place and gave us wel- 
 come. He showed J. the inner cloister, to 
 which I could not go : women were not al- 
 lowed there. It was because of my skirts, he 
 said ; and yet he too wore skirts, and he spread 
 out his cassock on each side. While they 
 were gone I waited in the church. I wonder 
 if ghostly voices are never heard within it. 
 The monks, long dead, whose love and even 
 life it was to make it beautiful until its walls 
 and ceilings were rich and glowing, its choir a 
 miracle of carving, and its sacristy hung with 
 prayer-inspiring pictures, have, like the Bag- 
 lioni, cause to bewail the degenerate latter day. 
 The beauty they created now lives but for the 
 benefit of a handful of monks whose monas- 
 
Two Pilgrims^ Progress, 133 
 
 tery is turned into a Boys' Agricultural School, 
 and for the occasional tourist. Later from the 
 high terrace of the park opposite San Pietro 
 we saw the boys in their blue blouses digging 
 and hoeing in the fields under the olives, where 
 probably the monks themselves once worked. 
 There is in this little park an amphitheatre 
 with archway, bearing the Perugian griffin in 
 the centre. It is shaded by dense ilex-trees, 
 from whose branches a raven must once have 
 croaked ; for evil has come upon the place, as 
 it has upon the gray monastery so near. In- 
 stead of nobles and men-at-arms and council- 
 lors of state, two or three poor women with 
 their babies sat on the stone benches gossip- 
 ing. And as we lingered there in the late 
 afternoon there came from San Pietro the 
 sound, not of monks chanting vespers, but of 
 some one playing the " Blue Danube " on an 
 old jingling piano. Only the valley below, 
 and the Tiber winding through it, and the 
 mountains beyond are unchanged. 
 
ACROSS THE TIBER TO ASSISI. 
 
 " Attd I slept ami dreamed again 
 and saw the same two pilgrims go- 
 ing dow7i the mountains along the 
 highway towards the city^ 
 
 'X X rHEN we left Perugia in the early morn- 
 ' ing we passed first by the statue of 
 Julius II., thus receiving, we said to each other, 
 the bronze pontiff's benediction. We imag- 
 ined this to be an original idea ; but it is use- 
 less to try to be original. Since then we have 
 remembered the same thought came to Miriam 
 and Donatello when they made the statue 
 their trysting-place. Then we rode through 
 the piazza, where a market was being held, and 
 where at one end a long row of women holding 
 baskets of eggs stood erect, though all around 
 other women and even men, selling fruits and 
 vegetables, sat comfortably on low stools. 
 
 On the other side of the Porta Romana we 
 saw that while Perugia was bright and clear in 
 
The Bronze Pontiff's Benediction, Perugia. 
 
 Page 134. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 135 
 
 the sunlight, a thick white mist covered the 
 valley, so that it looked as if a great lake, 
 bounded by the mountains, lay below. The 
 chrysanthemums and marigolds, hanging over 
 high garden walls, and the grass by the road- 
 side glistened with dew. Shining silver cob- 
 webs hung on the hedges. Before many 
 minutes, so fast did we go, we were riding 
 right into the mist. We could see but a few 
 feet in front of us, and the olives on either side, 
 through the heavy white veil, looked like spec- 
 tres. We passed no one but a man carrying a 
 lantern and a cage of owls. It seemed but 
 natural that so uncanny a ride should lead to a 
 home of shadows. And when we came to the 
 tomb of the Volumnii at the foot of the moun- 
 tain we left the tricycle without, and went down 
 for a while into its darkness and damp. When 
 we came out the mist had disappeared and the 
 road lay through sunshine. 
 
 A little farther on we had our first near 
 view of the Tiber. We crossed it by the old 
 Ponte San Giovanni, so narrow that there 
 was not room for us to pass a boy and a 
 donkey just in front. J. called, and the boy 
 
136 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 pushed his donkey close to the stone wall ; but 
 for all that we could not pass. Even as J. 
 called he was stopped by a sudden sharp pain 
 in his side, the result probably of his descent 
 into the tomb while he was still warm ; for he 
 had back-pedalled coming down the mountain. 
 And so we waited for many minutes on the 
 bridge to see, not the yellow Tiber one always 
 hears about, but a river blue in mid-stream, 
 white where it came running over the mill- 
 wheel and down the dam, and red and yellow 
 and green where it reflected the poplars and 
 oaks, and the skirts and handkerchiefs of the 
 women washing on its banks. But after the 
 bridge we left the river, for we were bound for 
 Assisi. We had a quiet, peaceful ride for sev- 
 eral miles on the Umbrian plain, where in the 
 old times no one dared to go without the per- 
 mission of the Baglioni, between vineyards and 
 fields where men were ploughing, and through 
 insignificant little villages, until we came out 
 upon the large piazza in front of Santa Maria 
 degli Angeli. It was crowded with peasants, 
 for market was just over, and there came from 
 every side the sound of many voices. When 
 

 x'^ 
 
 
Two Pilgrijns Progress. 137 
 
 we rode by we were surrounded at once, two 
 or three men keeping close to our side to sing 
 the praises of the hotels at Assisi and shower 
 their cards upon us. They pursued us even 
 into the church, and as far as the little hermi- 
 tage beneath the dome, to tell us that each 
 and all could speak English. 
 
 If the Umbrians about Assisi were always 
 like this, Saint Francis was a wise man to hide 
 himself in the woods and make friends with 
 beasts and birds. Over the sunny roads be- 
 yond Santa Maria, where he and Fra Egidio 
 walked singing and exhorting men and women 
 to repentance, we wheeled imploring, or rather 
 commanding, them to get out of the way. It 
 was a hard pull up the mountain-side, the 
 harder because the great monastery on its high 
 foundations seemed always so far above us. 
 When almost at the city gate a monk in brown 
 robes, the knotted cord about his waist, passed. 
 He stopped to look, but it was with a frown of 
 disapproval ; I think Saint Francis would have 
 smiled. 
 
AT ASSISI. 
 
 " Methoiight these things did rav- 
 ish my heart J I would have stayed 
 at that man's house a twelvetnonth 
 but that I knew I had farther 
 to go:' 
 
 TT was just noon when we reached Assisi, but 
 •*■ we rode no more that day. We spent the 
 afternoon in the town of Saint Francis. The 
 Albergo we selected from the many recom- 
 mended was without the large cloisters of the 
 monastery. The waiter at once remembered 
 that J. had been there before, though eighteen 
 months had passed since his first visit. The 
 Signore had two ladies with him then, he said. 
 He was delighted with the velocipede. It was 
 the first time in all his life he had seen one 
 with three wheels. Nothing would do but he 
 must show us the finest road to Rome. He 
 spread our map on the table as we eat our din- 
 ner, and put on his glasses, — for he was a little 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 139 
 
 bad in the eyes, he explained, — and then he 
 pointed out the very route we had already de- 
 cided upon. Ecco ! here, between Spoleto and 
 Terni, we should have a long climb up the 
 mountain, but then there would be seven miles 
 down the other side. Ah! that would be fine! 
 This long coast to Terni was clearly to make 
 up for the hardships we already had endured 
 on toilsome up-grades. 
 
 After dinner we went to the church. Goethe, 
 when he was in Assisi, saw the old Roman 
 Temple of Minerva, — and then, that his pleas- 
 ure in it might not be disturbed, refused to look 
 at anything else in the town, and went quickly 
 on his way. But when I passed out of the sun- 
 light into the dark lower church and under the 
 low rounded arches to the altar with Giotto's 
 angels and saints above, it seemed to me he 
 was the loser by his great • love for classic 
 beauty. Many who have been to this wonder- 
 ful church have written descriptions of it, but 
 none have really told, and indeed no one can 
 ever tell, how wonderful it is. The upper 
 church, with its great lofty nave and many win- 
 dows through which the light streams in on 
 
140 Two Pilgri7ns Progress, 
 
 the bright frescoed walls, is beautiful. But this 
 lower one, with its dark, subdued color and dim 
 light, and the odor of incense which always lin- 
 gers in it, is like the embodiment of the mys- 
 tery and love that inspired the saint in whose 
 honor it was built. In it one understands, for 
 the first time perhaps, what it is for which 
 the followers of Saint Francis gave up life and 
 action. Whoever was long under the influ- 
 ence of this place must, I thought, always stay, 
 — like the old gray-haired monk we saw kneel- 
 ing before a side altar rapt in contemplation. 
 And yet on the very threshold we found three 
 or four brothers laughing and joking with two 
 women, — Italian Dr. Mary Walkers they must 
 have been, for they wore men's collars and 
 cravats and coats, with field-glasses slung over 
 their shoulders, and stiff gray hats, and they 
 were smoking long sigare Cavour, They were 
 artists, and had been painting, oh, so badly ! in 
 the church all the morning. 
 
 The sun was setting when we left the mon- 
 astery and walked through the streets, now 
 silent and deserted, where Francis in his gay 
 youth wandered with boon companions, singing 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress. 141 
 
 not hymns but love-songs. A small boy came 
 and walked with us, and, unbidden, acted as our 
 guide. Here was the Duomo, he said, and 
 here the Church of Santa Chiara ; and, when we 
 were on the road without the city gate, Ecco ! 
 below, Santa Maria degli Angeli ! For from 
 where we stood we looked down upon the 
 huge church rising from the plain, where even 
 now there are scarcely more houses than in the 
 days when Franciscans, coming from far and 
 near to hold counsel with their founder, built 
 their straw huts upon it. Our self-appointed 
 guide was a bright little fellow, and never once 
 begged like the other children who followed us. 
 So when he showed us the road to Foliofno 
 where we must ride on the morrow, J. gave 
 him a sou. At the door of the Albergo he 
 said he must go home, but not to supper; he 
 never had any. He asked at what time w^e 
 should leave in the morning, when he would 
 like to come and say good-by. Felice notte — 
 "a happy night" — were his last words as he 
 turned away. 
 
VIRGIL'S COUNTRY. 
 
 ^'Ifwe have such ill speed at our 
 first setting out, what may we ex- 
 pect betwixt this atid our journeys 
 end!'' 
 
 T^HE next morning, with a select company 
 ^ of ragged boys, our young guide arrived 
 in time to see us start. When I came out 
 he nodded in a friendly way, as if to an old 
 acquaintance, to the wonder and admiration of 
 the other youngsters. The waiter, his glasses 
 on, came to the gate with us. Two monks 
 standing there asked how far we were going 
 on our velocipede. " To Rome } " they cried. 
 "Why, then, here are two pilgrims and two 
 priests ! " Our guide and his friend ran down 
 the mountain-side after us until we gave the 
 former another sou, when they at once dis- 
 appeared. It seemed a little ungrateful ; but 
 I did not give him much thought, for just 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 143 
 
 then J. bade me back-pedal with all my might. 
 The machine went very fast, despite my hard 
 work, and to my surprise J. suddenly steered 
 into a stone-pile by the roadside. " The brake 
 is broken ! " was his explanation as we slowly 
 upset. 
 
 Fortunately, however, the upright connecting 
 the band of the brake with the handle had only 
 slipped out of place, and though we could not 
 fix it in again securely, J. could still manage 
 to use it. This, so far as we could see, was the 
 one defect in our tricycle, but defect it was. 
 A nut on the end of the upright would have 
 prevented such an accident. But this is one of 
 the minor particulars in which tricycle-makers 
 — and we have tried many — are careless. 
 We had the rest of the coast without interrup- 
 tion. Half-way down, our little friend and his 
 followers ran out from under the olives ; he had 
 taken a short cut that he might see us again. 
 
 From Assisi to Terni was a long day's ride 
 by towns and villages, through fair valleys and 
 over rough mountains. From the foot of the 
 mountain at Assisi, past Monte Subasio, which, 
 bare and rocky, towered above the lower olive- 
 
144 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 covered hills, the road was level until we rode 
 by Spello with its old Roman gateway and 
 ruined amphitheatre. But the hill here was 
 not steep, and then again there came a level 
 stretch into Foligno, the first lowland town to 
 which we had come since we left Poggibonsi, 
 and which, with its mass of roofs and lofty dome 
 rising high above the city walls, looked little 
 like the Foligno in Raphael's picture. Already 
 in our short ride — for it is but ten miles from 
 Assisi to Foligno — we noticed a great dif- 
 ference in the people. It was not only that 
 many of the w^omen wore bodices and long ear- 
 rings, and turned their handkerchiefs up on 
 top of their heads, but they, and the men as 
 well, were less polite and more stupid than 
 the Tuscans or Umbrians about Perusria. 
 
 Few spoke to us, and one woman to whom 
 we said good-morning was so startled that she 
 thanked us in return, as if unused to such 
 civilities. For all J.'s shouts of a destra — to 
 the right — and Eccomi ! they would not make 
 room for us ; and now in Foligno one woman, 
 in her stupidity or obstinacy, walked directly 
 in front of the machine, and when the little 
 
Two Pilgrimi Progress, 145 
 
 wheel caught her dress, through no fault of 
 ours, cried '' Accidente voi!'' — the vol, instead 
 of le, being a far greater insult than the wish- 
 ing us an accident. Then she walked on, 
 cursing in loud voice, down the street, by the 
 little stream that runs through the centre of 
 the town, and into the market-place where 
 Saint Francis, in mistaken obedience to words 
 heard in ecstasy, sold the cloth he had taken 
 from his father that he might have money 
 to rebuild the church of San Damiano. 
 
 Even the beasts we met were stupid as the 
 people. At our coming, horses, donkeys, and 
 oxen tried to run. We therefore looked for at 
 least a skirmish when, beyond Foligno, a regi- 
 ment of cavalry in marching order advanced 
 upon us. But the soldiers stood our charge 
 bravely. Only the officer was routed and re- 
 treated into the gutter. Then, forgetting 
 military discipline, he turned his back upon 
 his men to see us ride. 
 
 We were now on the old Via Flaminia 
 and in the valley of the Clitumnus, — Virgil's 
 country. The poet's smiling fields and tall, 
 stiff oaks, his white oxen and peasants behind 
 
 10 
 
146 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 the plough or enjoying the cool shade, were on 
 either side. Crossing the fields were many 
 stony beds of streams, dry at this season, lined 
 with oaks and chestnuts, under whose shade 
 women were filling large baskets with acorns 
 and leaves. The upturned earth was rich and 
 brown. Through the trees or over them we 
 saw the whitish-blue sky, the purple mountains, 
 some pointed like pyramids, and the gray olive 
 hills with little villages in their hollows, and 
 before long Trevi on its high hill-top. And 
 then we came to the temple of the river god 
 Clitumnus, of which Pliny writes, and where 
 the little river, in which Virgil says the white 
 flocks for the sacrifice bathed, runs below, an 
 old mill on its bank and one willow bendino: 
 over it. 
 
 At the village of Le Vene, near the source 
 of the stream, we stopped at a wine-shop to 
 eat some bread and cheese. There was no 
 one there but the padrone and a dwarf who 
 wore a decent suit of black clothes and had a 
 medallion of the Pope on his watch-chain. He 
 had come in a carnage which waited for him 
 at the door. I think he was a drummer. He 
 
> 
 
 < 
 
 o 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 147 
 
 drank much wine, and spoke to us in a vile 
 patois. Indeed, the people thereabout all 
 spoke in dialects worse, I am sure, than any 
 Dante heard at the mouth of Hell. The dwarf 
 had travelled, and had been in Florence, where 
 he had seen a velocipede, but not like ours. It 
 was finer, or perhaps he should say more com- 
 modious. The seats were side by side, and it 
 had an umbrella attached, and it was worked 
 by the hands. It went, oh, so fast! and he inti- 
 mated that we could not hope to rival its speed. 
 I suppose our machine without an umbrella 
 seemed to him like a ship without a sail. But 
 1 think he had another tale to tell when, ten 
 minutes later, he having started before we did, 
 we passed him on the road. We were going 
 so fast I only had time to see that in his won- 
 der the reins fell from his hands. 
 
 Then came the small, wretched village of . 
 San Giacomo, with its old castle built up with 
 the houses of the poor, and then Spoleto, where 
 we lunched in a trattoria of the people which - 
 was much troubled by a plague of flies. A 
 company of Bersaglieri, red caps on the backs 
 of their heads and blue tassels dangling down 
 
i^S Two Pilgrims^ Progress, 
 
 their backs, sat at one table, ordering with 
 much merriment their soup and meat and 
 macaroni to be cooked a la B er sag Here ; at 
 another, two young men were evidently enjoy- 
 ing an unwonted feast ; and at the table with 
 us were three peasants, one of whom had 
 brought his bread in his pocket : he eat his 
 soup for dessert, and throughout the meal used 
 his own knife in preference to the knife and 
 fork laid at his place. Two dogs, a cat, and 
 a hen wandered in from the piazza and dined 
 on the bits of macaroni dropped by the not 
 over-careful soldiers. The waiter greeted us 
 cordially. He too had a machine, he said, but 
 had never heard of velocipedes with three 
 wheels. His had but two ; the Signore must 
 see it. And before he would listen to our 
 order for lunch, he showed J. his bicycle, — 
 a bone-shaker. He was very proud of it. 
 He had ridden as far as Terni. Ah ! what 
 a beautiful time we should have before the 
 afternoon was over! Seven miles down the 
 mountain ! 
 
 The thought of this coast made us leave 
 Spoleto with light hearts, though we knew 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress, 149 
 
 that first must come a hard climb. But if the 
 road was as perfect as it had been all the morn- 
 ing, there was not much to dread. It was 
 half-past two when we started from the trat- 
 toria, but we were fifteen minutes in walking 
 to the other end of the town. There was no 
 use riding. The streets were narrow and steep, 
 and crowded with stupid men and women and 
 donkeys, and with officers who instead of control- 
 ling were controlled by their horses. Beyond 
 the gate the ascent at first was gradual and we 
 rode easily, even as we worked looking back 
 to the famous old aqueduct and the shadowy 
 heights of Norcia. For some distance we went 
 by the dried-up bed of a wide stream, meeting 
 many priests on foot and peasants on donkeys. 
 But as the way became steeper we left the 
 stream far below, and came into a desolate 
 country, where the mountains were covered 
 with scrub-oaks, and priests and peasants dis- 
 appeared ; only one old man kept before us, 
 making short cuts up the mountain-side, but 
 after a while he too rode out of sight. 
 
 We soon gave up riding. J. tied a rope 
 to the tricycle and pulled while I pushed. 
 
150 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 The sun was now hidden behind the moun- 
 tain and the way was shady. But still it was 
 warm work and wearisome; for before long 
 the road became almost perpendicular and was 
 full of loose stones. How much more of this 
 was there, we asked a woman watching swine 
 on the hillside? "A mile," was her answer; 
 and yet she must have known there were at 
 least three. Finally, after what seemed hours 
 of toiling, we asked another peasant standing 
 in front of a lonely farm-house how much 
 farther it still was to the top. " You are 
 here now," she said. She at least was truth- 
 ful. A few feet more, and we looked down 
 a road as precipitous as that up which we 
 had come, and so winding that we could see 
 short stretches of it, like so many terraces, 
 all the way down the mountain. We walked 
 for about a hundred yards, and it was as hard 
 to hold back the machine as before it had 
 been to push it. Then we began to ride, but 
 the strain on the brake loosened the handle 
 a second time. We dismounted, and J. tried 
 to push it back into place : it snapped in 
 two pieces in his hands. Here we were, eight 
 
Two Pilgrims' Progress, 151 
 
 miles from Terni, in a lonely mountain road 
 in the evening, — the sun had already set, — 
 with a brakeless machine, which, if allowed 
 to start down-hill with its heavy load of two 
 riders and much baggage, would soon be more 
 unmanageable than a runaway horse. The 
 seven miles' coast to which we had looked 
 forward for days, was to be a walk after all. 
 Like the King of France and his twenty 
 thousand men, we had marched up the moun- 
 tain that we might march down again. Is it 
 any wonder that we both lost our tempers, 
 and that an accident was the smallest evil 
 we wished the manufacturers of our tricycle.'^ 
 Because they cared more for lightness than 
 for strength, — since record-making is as yet 
 the chief end of the cycling, — the necks of 
 people who ride for pleasure are forsooth to 
 be risked with impunity! 
 
 However, there was nothing to do but to 
 walk into Terni. It was very cold, and we 
 had to put on our heavy coats. Presently the 
 moon rose above the mountains on our left. 
 By its light we could see the white road, — 
 now provokingly good, but steep and winding 
 
152 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 and all unknown, — the hills that shut us in on 
 every side, and, far below, the stream making 
 its way through the narrow pass. The way 
 was unpleasantly lonely and silent. Now for 
 an hour or more we went wearily on without 
 hearing a sound but our steady tramp; and 
 now we passed a farm-house within which many 
 voices were raised in anger, while from the 
 barn a dog barked savagely upon our coming. 
 At times we thouo^ht we saw in the distance 
 a castle with tall towers or an old ruin, but 
 when we drew near we found in its place great 
 rocks and cliffs of tufa. Once we went through 
 a small village. The way here was not so steep, 
 and for a few minutes we rode. Just beyond 
 the houses three men, drivins: home a lar<Te 
 white bull, walked in the middle of the road. 
 J. shouted, that they might give us more space 
 to pass; but they only laughed, and tried to 
 set the bull on us with loud cries of Via ! 
 Before the last died away we were walking 
 again. 
 
 On and on we walked, all the time hold- 
 ing back the tricycle. But at last we began 
 to meet more people. Men with carts and 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 153 
 
 donkeys went by at long intervals, but they 
 spake never a word, and we too were silent. 
 Now and then we heard the near tinkling of 
 cow-bells, and came to olive-gardens, where in 
 the moonlight the black twisted trunks took 
 grotesque goblin shapes, and the branches threw 
 a network of shadows across our path. Then 
 we came to a railroad, and we knew we were 
 at the foot of the mountains, and that Terni 
 was not far off. We were at the end of the 
 seven, miles' coast and could ride again. Two 
 men just then coming our way, J. asked them 
 how far we were from the town ; but they 
 stood still and stared for answer. A second 
 time he asked, and still they were speechless. 
 " Imbecile I " he cried, and we left them there 
 dumb and motionless. Not far beyond the 
 road divided, and on either side were a few 
 houses. A woman (or a fiend in female form) 
 sat in front of one. " Which is the way to 
 Terni ? " we asked. She was silent. Once 
 more we asked. Chi lo sa ? — " Who knows } " 
 — she answered. This was more than tired 
 human nature could endure ; J. turned upon 
 her with a volley of choice Italian abuse. It 
 
154 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 conquered her as the prayers of Saint Anthony 
 vanquished her sister demons. She arose and 
 meekly showed us the way. 
 
 In another minute the lights of Terni were 
 in sight. Then we wheeled by a foundry with 
 great furnace in full blast, by a broad avenue 
 with rows of gas-jets, to the gates of the city, to 
 find them shut. There was a second of de- 
 spair, but J. was now not to be trifled with, 
 and he gave a yell of command which was an 
 effectual "open-sesame." And so we rode on 
 through lively streets and piazza to the hotel, 
 to supper, and to bed! 
 
TERNI AND ITS FALLS. 
 
 " Well, keep all things so in thy 
 mind, that they may be as a goad in 
 thy sides to prick thee forward in 
 the way thou must go.'''' 
 
 " IVhat thing so deserving as to 
 turn us out of the way to see it ? " 
 
 I KNOW little of Terni, except that in the 
 month of October the hotel is so cold that 
 the waiter comes into the dining-room in the 
 morning with hat on, and wrapped in overcoat 
 and muffler, and that there is an excellent 
 blacksmith in the town ; for the next morning, 
 as soon as J. had had the brake mended, he paid 
 the bill and loaded the tricycle. The padro7ze 
 was surprised at the shortness of our stay. 
 Did we not know there were waterfalls, and 
 famous ones too, but three miles distant ? We 
 could not take the time to visit them ? Well, 
 then, at least we must look at their picture ; 
 and he showed us a chromo pasted on the 
 
156 Two Pilgrims Progress, 
 
 hotel omnibus. I am afraid he took us for sad 
 Philistines ; but the fear of another kind of 
 waterfall was still a goad to hurry us onward. 
 Now we were so near our journey's end, no 
 wonder, however great, could have led us from 
 the straight path. 
 
IN THE LAND OF BRIGANDS. 
 
 " But by this place Christian 
 went without much danger, where- 
 at I somewhat wondered.'''' 
 
 'TPHERE was a great festa that day, and 
 -*- all along the street and out on the coun- 
 try road we met men and women in holiday 
 dress carrying baskets and bunches and wreaths 
 of pink chrysanthemums. In Narni, on the 
 heights which Martial called inaccessible, men 
 were lounging in the piazza or playing cards 
 in the caff^. For the shepherds alone there 
 was no rest from every-day work. Before we 
 reached even Narni, but ten miles across the 
 valley from Terni, we saw several driving their 
 sheep and goats into the broad meadows. 
 They wore goat-skin breeches, and by that sign 
 alone we should have known we were nearing 
 Rome. We lunched at Narni on coffee and 
 cakes, for it was the last town through which 
 
158 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 we should pass on that day's ride. It was here 
 that Ouintus, in its Roman prosperity, stayed so 
 long that Martial reproached him for his weari- 
 some delay. Could he come to it now, I doubt 
 if his friend would have the same reason for 
 complaint. It did not seem an attractive place, 
 and when we asked a man about the country 
 beyond, he said it was " brutoT We did not 
 learn till afterwards that this applied to the 
 people, and not to the country, and that here 
 we ought to have been briganded. 
 
 We were now high up on the mountain, — 
 on one side steep rocks, on the other a deep 
 precipice. Far below in a narrow valley ran 
 the little river Nar, and on the bank above it 
 the railroad. It was not an easy road to travel, 
 and often the hills were too steep to coast or 
 to climb. The few farm-houses by the way 
 were closed, for the peasants had gone to 
 church. We saw an occasional little gray 
 town crowning the top of sheer gray cliffs, like 
 those in Albert Dlirer's pictures, or an old 
 castle either deserted or else with farm-house 
 built in its ruins, where peasants leaned over 
 the battlemented walls. But the only villages 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 159 
 
 through which we rode were Otricoli, just be- 
 fore we descended to the valley of the Tiber, 
 where we created so great a sensation that 
 an old woman selling chestnuts — cooked, I 
 think, by a previous generation — was at first 
 too frightened to wait on us, and Borghet- 
 to, on the other side of the valley, where we 
 saw in the piazza the stage from Civita Cas- 
 tellana, in which town we were to spend the 
 night. 
 
 There were a few people abroad. In the 
 loneliest part of the mountain an old man in a 
 donkey-cart kept in front of us on a long up- 
 grade. Interested in the tricycle, he forgot the 
 donkey, which gave up a straight for a spiral 
 course, and monopolized the road. J. angrily 
 asked its driver which side he meant to take. 
 But the old man heaped coals of fire on his 
 head by offering to carry us up in his wagon. 
 After we left him far behind, we passed two 
 travellers resting by the wayside. Their bags 
 lay on the ground, and they looked weary and 
 worn. They gave us good-day, and where we 
 w^ere going they of course wanted to know. 
 They too were bound for Rome, it turned out, 
 
i6o Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 and had come from Bologna. After the two 
 gentlemen of Bologna, we overtook a group of 
 merry peasants, coats slung over their shoul- 
 ders for no possible reason but the sake of 
 picturesqueness, and hats adorned with gay 
 pompons of colored paper and tinsel. One 
 carried branches of green leaves and red fruit 
 like cherries, and as we went by he gave us a 
 branch and wished us a good journey. Next 
 went by an old woman, who said witli a 
 smile that we could go without horse or don- 
 key, — a witticism heard so often it could 
 no longer make us laugh. And then a little 
 boy all alone came " piping down the valley 
 wild." 
 
 We went with much content over the plain 
 by the Tiber, where there were broad grassy 
 stretches full of sheep and horses, and here and 
 there the shepherds' gypsy-looking huts. It 
 was such easy work now, that we eat our chest- 
 nuts as we rode; but beyond the bridge, on 
 which Sixtus V. and Clement VIII. and Greg- 
 ory XIII., in true papal fashion, have left their 
 names, the hills began again. On we toiled, 
 beneath shady oaks and by rocky places, until 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. i6i 
 
 we came out on a wide upland. From the 
 treeless road the meadows rolled far beyond to 
 high mountains, on whose sloping side the blue 
 smoke of charcoal-burners curled upward. The 
 moon already had risen, and in the west the 
 setting sun filled the sky with glowing amber 
 light, against which the tired peasants going 
 home were sharply silhouetted. 
 
 We were glad to see Civita Castellana. One 
 or two men in answer to our questions had 
 told us we were close to it, but we did not be- 
 lieve them. The fields seemed to stretch for 
 miles before us, and there was not a house or 
 tower in sight. But suddenly the road turned 
 and went down-hill, and there below was the 
 city perched on tufa cliffs, a deep ravine sur- 
 rounding it. Two carabinieri, in cocked hats 
 and folded cloaks like the famous two soli- 
 tary horsemen, were setting out on their night, 
 patrol. Vespers were just over in the church 
 near the bridge, and along the way where 
 happy little Etruscan schoolboys once whipped 
 homewards their treacherous schoolmaster, lit- 
 tle Italian boys and girls, let loose from church, 
 
 ran after us, torturing us with their shrill cries. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 Soon their elders joined them, and we were 
 closely beset wdth admirers. The town too 
 was in a hubbub about us, and in the streets 
 through which we wheeled, men and women 
 came from their houses to follow in our train. 
 At the door of the Albergo, where we were de- 
 tained for several minutes, the entire population 
 collected. We had difficulty in getting a room. 
 The festa, the padrone said, had brought many 
 country people into the town, and the inns 
 were full to overflowing. If J. would go with 
 him he would see what could be done for us. 
 The search led them through three houses. 
 In the mean time I kept guard over the ma- 
 chine. It was well I did, for once J. had gone 
 the natives closed upon me. Toddling infants 
 and gray-haired men, ragged peasants and gor- 
 geous officers pushed and struggled together 
 in their desire to see. Every now and then a 
 stealthy hand was thrust through the crowd 
 and felt the tire or tried the brake. I turned 
 from left to right crying, " Guarda ! Guarda ./" 
 I lifted exploring hands from the wheels. But 
 in vain. What was one against so many? A 
 man sitting in the doorway took pity on my 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 163 
 
 sad plight. He came out, and with a stick 
 mowed the people back. Then J. returned, 
 having found a room in the first house, which 
 the padrone had thought fit to conceal until 
 the last. 
 
A MIDDLING INN. 
 
 " The good of the place is before 
 you.'''' 
 
 ''''But here they ta7-ried and slept,^'' 
 
 TnHE Albergo of Civita Castellana was but 
 -*• a middling inn. The /^^r<9«^, in English 
 tweed, high boots, and Derby hat, looked half 
 cockney, half brigand. His wife wore an elabo- 
 rate false front, and much lace about her neck. 
 But they were far finer than their house. We 
 were lodged in the garret, in a room the size 
 of a large closet. The way to it led through 
 another bed-chamber, long and low, in which 
 four cots were ranged in a row along the wall. 
 When we crossed it on the way downstairs to 
 dinner I devoutly prayed that on our return 
 four nightcaps would not be nodding on the 
 pillows. Later in the evening, when we had 
 dined, we strolled out to the piazza. To see 
 the life of an Italian town you have only to go 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress, 165 
 
 to the caff^. We went to one near the Albergo. 
 There were two tables in it. We sat at the 
 smaller, and at the other were four ragged boys 
 playing cards! 
 
 Fortunately we w^ere the first to go to bed in 
 the garret. All through the night, however, -^ 
 for the mattress was hard and I slept little, — I 
 heard loud snores and groans, and the sound 
 of much tossing to and fro. We rose early in 
 the morning, but when we opened our door the 
 cots were empty, though they had not been so 
 long. 
 
ACROSS THE CAMPAGNA. 
 
 " They cotnpassed them 7'ojcnd on 
 every side j some went before^ some 
 behind, and some on the right, some 
 on the left:' 
 
 " Here they were withiti sight of 
 the city they were going to, also here 
 met them some of the inhabitants 
 thereof . • . and drawing near the 
 city they had yet a juore pofect view 
 thereof' 
 
 TTARLY as we were, the whole town was 
 ■*-^ stirrino- when we came dow^nstairs. But 
 who ever knew the hour when the people of an 
 Italian town were not up and abroad? No 
 sooner did J. bring the tricycle from the stable, 
 where it had been kept all night, to the Al- 
 bergo, than the piazza was again crowded. On 
 they all came with us, men, women, and chil- 
 dren, hooting and shouting, jumping and danc- 
 ing through the vilely paved streets, and finally 
 sprawling over the walls and on the rocks be- 
 yond the gate. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 167 
 
 There they stayed until we had gone down 
 the hill over the bridge, crossing the stream at 
 its foot, and up the hill on the opposite side, 
 passing from their sight around the first curve. 
 Soon we were on an upland and now really at 
 the beginning of the Campagna. The morning 
 was cold. For many miles we rode through a 
 champaign gleaming white with frost. But as 
 the sun rose higher in the heavens, and the 
 yellow light, which at first was spread over the 
 sky, faded and left a clear blue expanse above, 
 the air grew warmer and the frost disappeared. 
 The road wound on and on between oak woods 
 and wide cultivated fields, and green grassy 
 plains which gradually changed into great 
 sweeps of rolling treeless country, like the 
 moors. By the roadside were thick bushes of 
 low green sage and tangled blackberries, and 
 in places the broad flagstones of the old Fla- 
 minian Way, with weeds and dandelions and 
 pretty purple flowers growing from the crev- 
 ices. Sometimes a paving of smaller stones 
 stretched all across the road, so that for a 
 minute or two we were badly shaken, or else, 
 coming on them suddenly at the foot of a hill, 
 
1 68 Two Pilgrims' Progress, 
 
 all but upset. Truly, as has been said, it could 
 have been no joke for the old Romans to ride.. 
 To our left rose the great height of Soracte, 
 not snow-covered as Horace saw it, but bare 
 and brown save where purple shadows lay. 
 At first we met numbers of peasants all astride 
 of donkeys, going towards Civita Castellana, 
 families riding together and eating as they 
 went. Later, however, no one passed but an 
 occasional lonely rider (who in his long cloak 
 and high-pointed hat looked a genuine Fra 
 Diavolo), or else sportsmen and their dogs. 
 It was strange that though we saw many of 
 the latter, we never once heard the singing or 
 chirping of birds. There were hillsides and 
 fields full of large black cattle, or herds of 
 horses, or flocks of sheep and goats. There 
 were shepherds, too, sleeping in the shade or 
 by the roadside, leaning on their staffs or rul- 
 ing their flock with rod and rustic word, as in 
 the days when Poliziano sung. And if there 
 was no bird's song to break the silence of the 
 Campagna, there was instead a loud baaing of 
 sheep, led by the shrill piercing notes of the 
 lambs. If it was to such an accompaniment 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 169 
 
 that Corydon and Thyrsis sang in rivalry, their 
 song could have been poetical only in Virgil's 
 verse. 
 
 How hard we worked now that our pilgrim- 
 age was almost ended ! We scarcely looked 
 at the little village through which we wheeled, 
 and where a White Brother was going from 
 door to door, nor at the ruins which rose here 
 and there in the hollows and on the slopes of 
 the hills ; and when at last we saw on the hori- 
 zon the dome coming up out of the broad un- 
 dulating plain, we gave it but a short greeting, 
 and then hurried on faster than ever. We 
 would not even go to Castel Nuovo, which lies 
 a quarter of a mile or so from the road, but eat 
 our hasty lunch in a trattoria by the wayside, 
 while a man — an engineer he said he was — 
 showed us drawings he had made on his trav- 
 els, and asked about our ride. How brave it 
 was of the Signora to work ! he exclaimed, and 
 how brave of the Signore to sketch from his 
 velocipede ! 
 
 And after this " the hills their heights began 
 to lower," and with feet up we went like the 
 wind, and every time we looked at the dome it 
 
170 Two Pilgrims Progress. 
 
 seemed larger and more clearly defined against 
 the sky. But about six miles from Rome our 
 feet were on the pedals again and we were 
 working with all our might. Sand and loose 
 stones covered the road, which grew worse 
 until, in front of the staring pink quarantine 
 building, the stones were so many that in 
 steering out of the way of one we ran over 
 another, and the jar it gave us loosened the 
 screw of the luo^Qraore-carrier. We were so near 
 Rome we let it go. This was a mistake. But 
 a little farther, and the whole thing gave way, 
 and bags and knapsack rolled in the dust. It 
 took some fifteen minutes to set it to rights 
 again ; and all the time we stood in the shade- 
 less road, under a burning sun, for the heat in 
 the lower plains of the Campagna was as great 
 as if it were still summer. As the luggage- 
 carrier was slightly broken, we were afraid to 
 put too great a strain upon it, and for the rest 
 of the journey the knapsack went like a small 
 boy swinging on behind. 
 
 Like those other pilgrims, we were much 
 discouraged because of the way. But at last, 
 wheeling by pink and white trattorie^ whose 
 
From Via Flam.nia, near Ponte Molle. 
 
 Page 170. 
 
Two Pilgrims Progress. 171 
 
 walls were covered with illustrated bills of fare, 
 and coming to an open place where street-cars 
 were coming and going, the Ponte Molle, over 
 a now yellow Tiber, lay before us, and we were 
 under the shadow of the dome we from afar 
 had watched for many hours. Over the bridge 
 we went with cars and carts, between houses 
 and gardens and wine-shops, where there was 
 a discord of many hurdy-gurdies, to the Porta 
 del Popolo, and so into Rome. 
 
 Carabinieri were lounging about the gate, 
 and carriages were driving to the Pincian ; but 
 we rode on and up the street on the right of 
 the piazza. When we had gone a short dis- 
 tance we asked a man at a corner our way to 
 the Piazza di Spagna. We should have taken 
 the street to our left, he said, but now we could 
 reach it by crossing the Corso diagonally. As 
 we did so we heard a loud sst, sst behind us, 
 and we saw 2. gendarme running up the street; 
 but we went on. When we wheeled into the 
 Piazza di Spagna, however, a second, almost 
 breathless, ran out in front of us, and cried, 
 Aspetti I ("Wait!") But still we rode. As- 
 petti I he cried again, and half drew his sword. 
 
172 Two Pilgrims^ Progress, 
 
 In a minute we were surrounded. Models 
 came flying from the Spanish steps ; an old 
 countryman carrying a fish affectionately under 
 his arm, bootblacks, clerks from the near shops, 
 young Roman swells, — all these and many 
 more gathered about us. 
 
 " Aspetti ! " the gendarme still cried. 
 
 " P ere he ? " we asked. 
 
 And then his fellow-officer, whom we had 
 seen on the Corso, came up. " Get down ! " 
 he said, in fierce tones of command. 
 
 " PercJie ? " we asked again. 
 
 " Per Christo ! " was his only answer. 
 
 The crowd laughed with glee. Hackmen 
 shouted their applause. It was ignominious, 
 perhaps, but the wisest policy, to get down and 
 walk to our hotel. 
 
THE FINISH. 
 
 " It pities i7ie much for this poor 
 fnan : it will certainly go ill with 
 him at the last.^'' 
 
 TT THAT pilgrim of old times thought his 
 ^ ^ pilgrimage really over until he gave 
 either out of his plenty or nothing in alms? 
 Two months later we too gave our mite, not to 
 the church or to the poor, but to the Govern- 
 ment ; for we were then summoned before a 
 police magistrate and fined ten francs for ''fu- 
 rious riding on the Corso, and refusing to 
 descend when ordered." 
 
 And so our pilgrimage ended. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 VETTURINO versus TRICYCLE. 
 
 By JOSEPH PENNELL. 
 
 From " Outing" 
 
 Who has not journeyed through a country with his 
 favorite author long before he makes the actual trip 
 himself ? and who, when he comes to see with his 
 own eyes that at which he has hitherto looked 
 through some one else's, does not find himself his 
 best guide? Long before I came to Italy I had 
 travelled along its highways and by-ways with many 
 authors, more especially with Hawthorne in his 
 '* ItaHan Note-Book," and Mr. Howells in his 
 *' Italian Journeys " and " Venetian Life." When 
 it was finally my good fortune to make the journey 
 myself, I was at first lucky enough to have for a com- 
 panion, not his books, but Mr. Howells himself; and 
 I frankly confess I found him far more delightful 
 and satisfactory in person than in print. A year 
 later I started for the same country, this time en- 
 cumbered with a wife and a tricycle. Mr. Howells 
 could no longer be my cicerone: in the first place 
 he was back in Boston, — I might add, as if in pa- 
 renthesis, calling me ** lucky dog" for being able to 
 go so soon again over the well-known ground ; and, 
 
176 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 in the second place, because the route I now in- 
 tended to take is not described in his books. But it 
 is in Hawthorne's " Note-Book," a volume which, as 
 I have just said, I had frequently studied. But of 
 course I forgot to put it in my knapsack, and so had 
 not a chance to see it until I arrived in Rome. When 
 I there looked into it, naturally in a more critical 
 spirit — inspired by personal knowledge of the sub- 
 ject — than I ever had before, the first thing that 
 struck me was the advantage I had had over my old 
 master in travelling by tricycle instead of by diligence. 
 From the little village of Passignano to Rome we 
 had followed exactly the same road, and though we 
 began our rides at its opposite ends, I could still 
 easily compare the time we had made, and the com- 
 fort and convenience and pleasure we had enjoyed 
 by the way. As this comparison may be interesting 
 to many who intend some day to make the cycling 
 tour of Italy, I will here briefly indicate Hawthorne's 
 experience, principally as to time and roads, and 
 then mine : — 
 
 HAWTHORNE'S JOURNEY 
 TO FLORENCE. 
 
 FIRST DAY OF TRIP. 
 
 We passed through the Porta 
 del Popolo at about 8 o'clock, and 
 . . . began our journey along the 
 Flaminian Way. . . . The road 
 was not particularly picturesque. 
 The country undulated, but scarce- 
 ly rose iitto hills. . . . Finally came 
 to the village of Castel Nuovo di 
 Porta . . . between 12 and i. . . . 
 Afternoon, Soracte rose before 
 
 MY NOTES. 
 
 LAST D.\Y OF TRIP. 
 
 We left Civit^ Castellana at a 
 quarter of eight. Road so rough, 
 had to walk down-hill and up again. 
 (So did Hawthorne's party. ) 
 Road very picturesque, and, be- 
 fore long, a distant glimpse of St. 
 Peter's. Began to see, and occa- 
 sionally to feel, the paving of the 
 old Flaminian Way,which is abomi- 
 nable. Made of flagstones thrown 
 roughly together, or else little 
 
Appendix. 
 
 177 
 
 us. . . . The road kept trending 
 towards the mountam, following 
 the line of the old Flaminian Way, 
 which we could see at frequent 
 intervals close beside the modern 
 track. It is paved with large flag- 
 stones, laid so accurately together 
 that it is still, in some places, as 
 smooth and even as the floor of a 
 church, and everywhere the tufts 
 of grass found it difficult to root 
 themselves into the interstices. . . . 
 Its course is straighter than that 
 of the road of to-day. ... I for- 
 get where we finally lost it. . • . 
 Passed through the town of Rig- 
 nano — road still grew more and 
 more picturesque. . . . Came in 
 sight of the high, flat table-land, 
 on which stands Civita Castellana. 
 . . , After passing over the bridge, 
 I alighted with J. and R. and 
 made the ascent on foot. ... At 
 the top our vetturino took us into 
 the carriage again, and quickly 
 brought us to what appears to be 
 a very good hotel. . . . After a 
 splendid dinner we walked out 
 into the little town, etc. 
 
 SECOND DAY. 
 
 Roused at 4 o'clock this morn- 
 ing ; . . . ready to start between 5 
 and 6. . . . Remember nothing par- 
 ticularly till we came to Borghetto. 
 . . . After leaving Borghetto, we 
 crossed the broad valley of the 
 Tiber. . . . Otricoli by and by 
 appeared. ... As the road kept 
 ascending, and as the hills grew 
 to be movmtainous, we had taken 
 on two additional horses, making 
 six in all, with a man and boy . . . 
 
 blocks, like the Roman pavement. 
 Coming on a stretch of it, at the 
 foot of a hill, and hidden with 
 dust, smashed our luggage-carrier, 
 and loosened the machine, — more 
 than the whole trip had done. 
 Passed Rignano, — usual sensa- 
 tion, — good cafe. Under Soracte 
 all morning. Reached Castel 
 Nuovo di Porta at 11. (Distance 
 to this village from Civita Cas- 
 tellana much farther than from it 
 to Rome, yet we reached it one 
 hour sooner than Hawthorne did, 
 starting out from Rome.) Road 
 got worse and worse. Finally 
 nothing but ruts and stones. 
 Hills not to be laughed at (though 
 Hawthorne thought them scarcely 
 perceptible). Arrived at the Por- 
 ta del Popolo about half-past 
 one. (About three and a half 
 hours' better time than Haw- 
 thorne.) Distance, thirty-five Ital- 
 ian miles. 
 
 OUR SECOND DAY FROM ROME. 
 
 (We never got up at any such 
 unearthly hours as Hawthorne 
 indulged in.) Left Terni at 11 
 o'clock, having been obliged to 
 get a new brake made. Terni, 
 dead level, in low valley, — straight, 
 wide road, ten miles across the 
 valley, — surface of the road good. 
 Just outside of Narni road climbs 
 up a steep hill into the town. 
 (There must have been an earth- 
 quake since Hawthorne's time, as 
 
178 
 
 Appendix, 
 
 to keep them in motion. . . . 
 Murray's guide-book is exceed- 
 ingly vague and unsatisfactory 
 along this route. . . . Farther on 
 [we saw] the gray tower of Narni. 
 ... A long, winding street passes 
 yjrough Narni, broadening at one 
 point into a market-place ; . . . 
 came out from it on the other side. 
 . . - The road went winding down 
 into the peaceful vale. . . . From 
 Narni to Terni I remember noth- 
 ing that need be recorded. Terni, 
 like so many other towns in the 
 neighborhood, stands in a high 
 and commanding position. . . . 
 We reached it between ii and 12. 
 ... It is worth while to record, 
 as history of vetturino commissary 
 customs, that for breakfast we had 
 coffee, eggs, and bread and butter; 
 for lunch, an omelette, stewed veal, 
 figs and grapes, and two decanters 
 of wine ; for dinner an excellent 
 vermicelli soup, two young fowls 
 fricasseed, and a hind-quarter of 
 roast lamb, with fritters, oranges, 
 and figs, and two more decanters 
 of wine. 
 
 THIRD DAY. 
 
 At 6 o'clock this morning . . . 
 we drove out of the city gate 
 of Terni. . . . Our way was now 
 through the vale of Terni. . . . 
 Soon began to wind among steep 
 and lofty hills. . . . Wretched 
 villages. ... At Strettura we 
 added two oxen to our horses. 
 
 Terni, which he saw in a high and 
 commanding position, now stands 
 in the lowest part of the valley, 
 with mountains all around.) PVom 
 Narni up nearly all the way to 
 Otricoli, with the exception of 
 here and there such a steep de- 
 scent that we had to hold the 
 machine back with all our might, 
 riding for several hours was al- 
 most impossible. (Wish we had 
 had six horses, a man, and a boy 
 to pull us on.) From Otricoli, 
 down and all across the valley, 
 excellent riding to Borghetto; 
 then big hill up, out on to the 
 Campagna, and up and down — 
 good road — all the way to Civitk 
 Castellana, which we reached be- 
 tween 6 and 7. Terrible sensa- 
 tion ! ! ! (This day Hawthorne 
 came in two hours ahead ; but he 
 had six horses and the hills in his 
 favor.) We eat every day coffee, 
 bread and butter, and rolls in the 
 morning; for lunch, a beefsteak, 
 or macaroni, and fruit, no ivine, 
 but fresh lemons and water; for 
 dinner, soup, two meats, fruit, and 
 a fiijsifl of wine. Distance about 
 thirty-three Italian miles. (We 
 carried Baedeker, and not Murray, 
 and found it not unsatisfactory.) 
 
 THIRD DAY. 
 
 Left Assisi about S. Splen- 
 did coast down into the valley. 
 Beautiful ride over the undulating 
 road, past Spello to Foligno, not 
 stopping in the latter place, ex- 
 cepting to have accidents wished 
 us by an old woman we almost ran 
 over. Then through the beautiful 
 
Appendix, 
 
 1/9 
 
 and began to ascend the Monte 
 Somma, which ... is nearly 
 four thousand feet high where we 
 crossed it. When we came to 
 the steepest part of the ascent, 
 Gaetano allowed its to walk. . . . 
 We arrived at Spoleto before 
 noon. . . . After lunch ... we 
 found our way up a steep and 
 narrow street that led us to the 
 city gate. . . . Resumed our jour- 
 ney, emerging from the city into 
 the classic valley of the Clitumnus. 
 . . . After passing Le Vene, we 
 came to the little temple . . . 
 immortalized by Pliny. ... I re- 
 member nothing else of the valley 
 of Clitumnus, except that the beg- 
 gars . . . were well-nigh profane 
 in the urgency of their petitions. 
 The city of Terni seems com- 
 pletely to cover a high peaked 
 hill. . . . We reached Foligno in 
 good season yestej'day aftei'itoon. 
 [This passage really belongs to his 
 fourth day of travel, but as it 
 shows at what time of the third 
 day he reached Foligno, I have 
 included it with the third.] 
 
 FOURTH DAY. 
 
 I have already remarked that it 
 is still possible to live well in 
 Italy at no great expense, and that 
 the high prices charged to fores- 
 tieri are artificial, and ought to be 
 abated. . . . We left Foligno be- 
 times in the morning ; . • . soon 
 passed the old town of Spello. 
 ... By and by we reached Assisi. 
 We ate our dejeuner, and resumed 
 
 valley of the Clitumnus — grand 
 road — lovely day and wonderfully 
 fair country. ( We saw no beggars. ) 
 Rode by the little temple spoken 
 of by Pliny. Ate some bread and 
 cheese at Le Vene. Reached 
 Spoleto at one ; lunched ; then 
 rode up the steep street, through 
 the gate at the other end of the 
 city, and then began a tremendous 
 climb of six miles over Monte 
 Somma, most of which we had 
 to walk. At last had hard work 
 to push. Coming finally to the 
 top, found the descent on the 
 other side even steeper. Where 
 it was a little less steep, we got 
 on the machine, put on the brake, 
 which came off in my hand. Bad 
 brake was the one defect in our 
 tandem. Had to walk the rest of 
 the way. In Strettura, men set 
 bull on us. (Not quite so pleas- 
 ant as Hawthorne's experience.) 
 Arrived in Terni at 8 o'clock, 
 having walked the last few miles 
 by moonlight, — about forty miles 
 all together, of which we walked 
 fully the last fourteen. (Made in 
 one day what Hawthorne did in 
 a day and a half.) 
 
 FOURTH DAY. 
 
 (Expenses of this trip about five 
 francs a day each.) Rode from 
 Perugia to Assisi, a distance of 
 fourteen miles, in about two hours. 
 Splendid coast down the hill out- 
 side of Perugia (up which Haw- 
 thorne walked). Crossed the 
 Tiber. Visited Santa Maria degli 
 Angeli. Awful stitch in my side. 
 Climbed up into Assisi, where we 
 
i8o 
 
 Appendix, 
 
 our journey. . . . We soon reached 
 the Church of St. Mary of the 
 Angels. ... By and by came to 
 the foot of the high hill on which 
 stands Perugia, and which is so 
 long and steep that Gaetano took 
 a yoke of oxen to aid his horses 
 in the ascent. We all, except my 
 wife, walked a part of the way up. 
 . . . The coach lagged far behind 
 
 FIFTH DAY. 
 
 Left Perugia about 3 o'clock 
 to-day, and went down a pretty 
 steep descent. . . . The road be- 
 gan to ascend before reaching the 
 village of Mugione ; . . . between 
 5 and 6 we came in sight of the 
 Lake of Thrasymene, . . . then 
 reached the town of Passignano. 
 (He stayed there all night.) 
 
 SIXTH DAY. 
 
 We started at 6 o'clock . . . 
 [for Arezzo]. We saw Cortona, 
 like so many other cities in this 
 region, on its hill, and arrived 
 about noon at Arezzo. 
 
 stayed all afternoon, to recover, 
 and to see the church. 
 
 FIFTH DAY. 
 
 I covered their fifth and sixth 
 days' ride, this time by myself on 
 the tricycle, in three hours and a 
 half actual riding time, and was 
 pulled up the long hill into Peru- 
 gia, in a most easy and delightful 
 way, behind the diligence. 
 
 From Arezzo, Hawthorne went directly to Florence 
 in one day, over a road which Italian cyclers have told 
 me is excellent, and which is the post-road to Rome. 
 We went by way of Montepulciano and Siena, being 
 between two and three weeks on the way. I hope 
 this short account of about one third of our ride will 
 convince other people that cycling is far quicker 
 than the old posting system, far plcasanter than 
 
Appendix, i8i 
 
 riding in a stuffy railway-carriage, which whirls you 
 through tunnels, and far the best way in which to 
 see Italy, — a country which abounds in magnificent 
 roads, and which should be thoroughly explored by 
 all cyclers who care for something beside record- 
 making. 
 
 University Press : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
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