"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."