"That, hid by beech and pine,

Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest

Of purple Apennine."

Instead of that, what manner of land did she see actually before

her? Dry and shadeless hill-sides, tilled with obtrusive tilth to

their topmost summit; ploughed fields and hoary olive-groves

silvering to the wind, in interminable terraces; long suburbs,

unlovely in their gaunt, bare squalor, stretching like huge arms of

some colossal cuttlefish over the spurs and shoulders of that

desecrated mountain. No woods, no moss, no coolness, no greenery;

all nature toned down to one monotonous grayness. And this dreary

desert was indeed the place where her baby must be born, the baby

predestined to regenerate humanity!

Oh, why did they ever leave that enchanted Florence!

Meanwhile Alan had got together the luggage, and engaged a

ramshackle Perugian cab; for the public vehicles of Perugia are

perhaps, as a class, the most precarious and incoherent known to

science. However, the luggage was bundled on to the top by Our

Lady's grace, without dissolution of continuity; the lean-limbed

horses were induced by explosive volleys of sound Tuscan oaths to

make a feeble and spasmodic effort; and bit by bit the sad little

cavalcade began slowly to ascend the interminable hill that rises

by long loops to the platform of the Prefettura.

That drive was the gloomiest Herminia had ever yet taken. Was it

the natural fastidiousness of her condition, she wondered, or was

it really the dirt and foul smells of the place that made her

sicken at first sight of the wind-swept purlieus? Perhaps a little

of both; for in dusty weather Perugia is the most endless town to

get out of in Italy; and its capacity for the production of

unpleasant odors is unequalled no doubt from the Alps to Calabria.

As they reached the bare white platform at the entry to the upper

town, where Pope Paul's grim fortress once frowned to overawe the

audacious souls of the liberty-loving Umbrians, she turned mute

eyes to Alan for sympathy. And then for the first time the

terrible truth broke over her that Alan wasn't in the least

disappointed or disgusted; he knew it all before; he was accustomed

to it and liked it! As for Alan, he misinterpreted her glance,

indeed, and answered with that sort of proprietary pride we all of

us assume towards a place we love, and are showing off to a

newcomer: "Yes, I thought you'd like this view, dearest; isn't it

wonderful, wonderful? That's Assisi over yonder, that strange

white town that clings by its eyelashes to the sloping hill-side:

and those are the snowclad heights of the Gran Sasso beyond; and

that's Montefalco to the extreme right, where the sunset gleam just

catches the hill-top."




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