Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc

at the same level, but farther from me, opened, and a man leaned out, just as those alternate figures come in and out of the toys that tell the weather. 'It is impossible,' said the man; 'we have no rooms.'

      Then they talked a great deal together, while I shouted, _'Quid vis? Non e possibile dormire in la foresta! e troppo fredo! Vis ne me assassinare? Veni de Lugano--e piu--non e possibile ritornare!'_ and so forth.

      They answered in strophe and antistrophe, sometimes together in full chorus, and again in semichorus, and with variations, that it was impossible. Then a light showed in the chinks of their great door; the lock grated, and it opened. A third person, a tall youth, stood in the hall. I went forward into the breach and occupied the hall. He blinked at me above a candle, and murmured, as a man apologizing 'It is not possible.'

      Whatever I have in common with these southerners made me understand that I had won, so I smiled at him and nodded; he also smiled, and at once beckoned to me. He led me upstairs, and showed me a charming bed in a clean room, where there was a portrait of the Pope, looking cunning; the charge for that delightful and human place was sixpence, and as I said good-night to the youth, the man and woman from above said good-night also. And this was my first introduction to the most permanent feature in the Italian character. The good people!

      When I woke and rose I was the first to be up and out. It was high morning. The sun was not yet quite over the eastern mountains, but I had slept, though so shortly yet at great ease, and the world seemed new and full of a merry mind. The sky was coloured like that high metal work which you may see in the studios of Paris; there was gold in it fading into bronze, and above, the bronze softened to silver. A little morning breeze, courageous and steady, blew down the lake and provoked the water to glad ripples, and there was nothing that did not move and take pleasure in the day.

      The Lake of Lugano is of a complicated shape, and has many arms. It is at this point very narrow indeed, and shallow too; a mole, pierced at either end with low arches, has here been thrown across it, and by this mole the railway and the road pass over to the eastern shore. I turned in this long causeway and noticed the northern view. On the farther shore was an old village and some pleasure-houses of rich men on the shore; the boats also were beginning to go about the water. These boats were strange, unlike other boats; they were covered with hoods, and looked like floating waggons. This was to shield the rowers from the sun. Far off a man was sailing with a little brown sprit-sail. It was morning, and all the world was alive.

      Coffee in the village left me two francs and two pennies. I still thought the thing could be done, so invigorating and deceiving are the early hours, and coming farther down the road to an old and beautiful courtyard on the left, I drew it, and hearing a bell at hand I saw a tumble-down church with trees before it, and went in to Mass; and though it was a little low village Mass, yet the priest had three acolytes to serve it, and (true and gracious mark of a Catholic country!) these boys were restless and distracted at their office.

      You may think it trivial, but it was certainly a portent. One of the acolytes had half his head clean shaved! A most extraordinary sight! I could not take my eyes from it, and I heartily wished I had an Omen-book with me to tell me what it might mean.

      When there were oracles on earth, before Pan died, this sight would have been of the utmost use. For I should have consulted the oracle woman for a Lira--at Biasca for instance, or in the lonely woods of the Cinder Mountain; and, after a lot of incense and hesitation, and wrestling with the god, the oracle would have accepted Apollo and, staring like one entranced, she would have chanted verses which, though ambiguous, would at least have been a guide. Thus:

      Matutinus adest ubi Vesper, et accipiens te Saepe recusatum voces intelligit hospes Rusticus ignotas notas, ac flumina tellus Occupat--In sancto tum, tum, stans Aede caveto Tonsuram Hirsuti Capitis, via namque pedestrem Ferrea praeveniens cursum, peregrine, laborem Pro pietate tuâ inceptum frustratur, amore Antiqui Ritus alto sub Numine Romae.

      LECTOR. What Hoggish great Participles!

      AUCTOR. Well, well, you see it was but a rustic oracle at 9 3/4 d. the revelation, and even that is supposing silver at par. Let us translate it for the vulgar:

      When early morning seems but eve And they that still refuse receive: When speech unknown men understand; And floods are crossed upon dry land. Within the Sacred Walls beware The Shaven Head that boasts of Hair, For when the road attains the rail The Pilgrim's great attempt shall fail.

      Of course such an oracle might very easily have made me fear too much. The 'shaven head' I should have taken for a priest, especially if it was to be met with 'in a temple'--it might have prevented me entering a church, which would have been deplorable. Then I might have taken it to mean that I should never have reached Rome, which would have been a monstrous weight upon my mind. Still, as things unfolded themselves, the oracle would have become plainer and plainer, and I felt the lack of it greatly. For, I repeat, I had certainly received an omen.

      The road now neared the end of the lake, and the town called Capo di Lago, or 'Lake-head', lay off to my right. I saw also that in a very little while I should abruptly find the plains. A low hill some five miles ahead of me was the last roll of the mountains, and just above me stood the last high crest, a precipitous peak of bare rock, up which there ran a cog-railway to some hotel or other. I passed through an old town under the now rising heat; I passed a cemetery in the Italian manner, with marble figures like common living men. The road turned to the left, and I was fairly on the shoulder of the last glacis. I stood on the Alps at their southern bank, and before me was Lombardy.

      Also in this ending of the Swiss canton one was more evidently in Italy than ever. A village perched upon a rock, deep woods and a ravine below it, its houses and its church, all betrayed the full Italian spirit.

      The frontier town was Chiasso. I hesitated with reverence before touching the sacred soil which I had taken so long to reach, and I longed to be able to drink its health; but though I had gone, I suppose, ten miles, and though the heat was increasing, I would not stop; for I remembered the two francs, and my former certitude of reaching Milan was shaking and crumbling. The great heat of midday would soon be on me, I had yet nearly thirty miles to go, and my bad night began to oppress me.

      I crossed the frontier, which is here an imaginary line. Two slovenly customs-house men asked me if I had anything dutiable on me. I said No, and it was evident enough, for in my little sack or pocket was nothing but a piece of bread. If they had applied the American test, and searched me for money, then indeed they could have turned me back, and I should have been forced to go into the fields a quarter of a mile or so and come into their country by a path instead of a highroad.

      This necessity was spared me. I climbed slowly up the long slope that hides Como, then I came down upon that lovely city and saw its frame of hills and its lake below me.

      These things are not like things seen by the eyes. I say it again, they are like what one feels when music is played.

      I entered Como between ten and eleven faint for food, and then a new interest came to fill my mind with memories of this great adventure. The lake was in flood, and all the town was water.

      Como dry must be interesting enough; Como flooded is a marvel. What else is Venice? And here is a Venice at the foot of high mountains, and _all_ in the water, no streets or squares; a fine even depth of three feet and a half or so for navigators, much what you have in the Spitway in London River at low spring tides.

      There were a few boats about, but the traffic and pleasure of Como was passing along planks laid on trestles over the water here and there like bridges; and for those who were in haste, and could afford it (such as take cabs in London), there were wheelbarrows, coster carts, and what not, pulled about by men for hire; and it was a sight to remember all one's life to see the rich men of Como squatting on these carts and barrows, and being pulled about over the water by the poor men of Como, being, indeed, an epitome of all modern sociology and economics and religion and organized charity and strenuousness and liberalism and sophistry generally.

      For my part I was determined to explore this curious town in the water, and I especially desired to see it on the lake side, because there one would get the best impression of its being really an aquatic town; so