TWILIGHT IN ITALY

By D. H. Lawrence

1916

CONTENTS

THE CRUCIFIX ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS

ON THE LAGO DI GARDA 1 _The Spinner and the Monks_ 2 _The Lemon Gardens_ 3 _The Theatre_ 4 _San Gaudenzio_ 5 _The Dance_ 6 _Il Duro_ 7 _John_

ITALIANS IN EXILE

THE RETURN JOURNEY

_The Crucifix Across the Mountains_

The imperial road to Italy goes from Munich across the Tyrol, throughInnsbruck and Bozen to Verona, over the mountains. Here the greatprocessions passed as the emperors went South, or came home again fromrosy Italy to their own Germany. 

And how much has that old imperial vanity clung to the German soul? Didnot the German kings inherit the empire of bygone Rome? It was not avery real empire, perhaps, but the sound was high and splendid. 

Maybe a certain Grössenwahn is inherent in the German nature. If onlynations would realize that they have certain natural characteristics, ifonly they could understand and agree to each other's particular nature, how much simpler it would all be. 

The imperial procession no longer crosses the mountains, going South. That is almost forgotten, the road has almost passed out of mind. Butstill it is there, and its signs are standing. 

The crucifixes are there, not mere attributes of the road, yet stillhaving something to do with it. The imperial processions, blessed by thePope and accompanied by the great bishops, must have planted the holyidol like a new plant among the mountains, there where it multiplied andgrew according to the soil, and the race that received it. 

As one goes among the Bavarian uplands and foothills, soon one realizeshere is another land, a strange religion. It is a strange country, remote, out of contact. Perhaps it belongs to the forgotten, imperialprocessions. 

Coming along the clear, open roads that lead to the mountains, onescarcely notices the crucifixes and the shrines. Perhaps one's interestis dead. The crucifix itself is nothing, a factory-made piece ofsentimentalism. The soul ignores it. 

But gradually, one after another looming shadowily under their hoods, the crucifixes seem to create a new atmosphere over the whole of thecountryside, a darkness, a weight in the air that is so unnaturallybright and rare with the reflection from the snows above, a darknesshovering just over the earth. So rare and unearthly the light is, fromthe mountains, full of strange radiance. Then every now and again recursthe crucifix, at the turning of an open, grassy road, holding a shadowand a mystery under its pointed hood. 

I was startled into consciousness one evening, going alone over a marshyplace at the foot of the mountains, when the sky was pale and unearthly, invisible, and the hills were nearly black. At a meeting of the trackswas a crucifix, and between the feet of the Christ a handful of witheredpoppies. It was the poppies I saw, then the Christ. 

It was an old shrine, the wood-sculpture of a Bavarian peasant. TheChrist was a peasant of the foot of the Alps. He had broad cheekbonesand sturdy limbs. His plain, rudimentary face stared fixedly at thehills, his neck was stiffened, as if in resistance to the fact of thenails and the cross, which he could not escape. It was a man nailed downin spirit, but set stubbornly against the bondage and the disgrace. Hewas a man of middle age, plain, crude, with some of the meanness of thepeasant, but also with a kind of dogged nobility that does not yield itssoul to the circumstance. Plain, almost blank in his soul, themiddle-aged peasant of the crucifix resisted unmoving the misery of hisposition. He did not yield. His soul was set, his will was fixed. He washimself, let his circumstances be what they would, his life fixed down. 

Across the marsh was a tiny square of orange-coloured light, from thefarm-house with the low, spreading roof. I remembered how the man andhis wife and the children worked on till dark, silent and intent, carrying the hay in their arms out of the streaming thunder-rain intothe shed, working silent in the soaking rain. 

The body bent forward towards the earth, closing round on itself; thearms clasped full of hay, clasped round the hay that presses soft andclose to the breast and the body, that pricks heat into the arms and theskin of the breast, and fills the lungs with the sleepy scent of driedherbs: the rain that falls heavily and wets the shoulders, so that theshirt clings to the hot, firm skin and the rain comes with heavy, pleasant coldness on the active flesh, running in a trickle down towardsthe loins, secretly; this is the peasant, this hot welter of physicalsensation. And it is all intoxicating. It is intoxicating almost like asoporific, like a sensuous drug, to gather the burden to one's body inthe rain, to stumble across the living grass to the shed, to relieveone's arms of the weight, to throw down the hay on to the heap, to feellight and free in the dry shed, then to return again into the chill, hard rain, to stoop again under the rain, and rise to return again withthe burden. 

It is this, this endless heat and rousedness of physical sensation whichkeeps the body full and potent, and flushes the mind with a blood heat, a blood sleep. And this sleep, this heat of physical experience, becomesat length a bondage, at last a crucifixion. It is the life and thefulfilment of the peasant, this flow of sensuous experience. But at lastit drives him almost mad, because he cannot escape. 

For overhead there is always the strange radiance of the mountains, there is the mystery of the icy river rushing through its pink shoalsinto the darkness of the pine-woods, there is always the faint tang ofice on the air, and the rush of hoarse-sounding water. 

And the ice and the upper radiance of snow are brilliant with timelessimmunity from the flux and the warmth of life. Overhead they transcendall life, all the soft, moist fire of the blood. So that a man mustneeds live under the radiance of his own negation. 

There is a strange, clear beauty of form about the men of the Bavarianhighlands, about both men and women. They are large and clear andhandsome in form, with blue eyes very keen, the pupil small, tightened, the iris keen, like sharp light shining on blue ice. Their large, full-moulded limbs and erect bodies are distinct, separate, as if theywere perfectly chiselled out of the stuff of life, static, cut off. Where they are everything is set back, as in a clear frosty air. 

Their beauty is almost this, this strange, clean-cut isolation, as ifeach one of them would isolate himself still further and for ever fromthe rest of his fellows. 

Yet they are convivial, they are almost the only race with the souls ofartists. Still they act the mystery plays with instinctive fullness ofinterpretation, they sing strangely in the mountain fields, they lovemake-belief and mummery, their processions and religious festivals areprofoundly impressive, solemn, and rapt. 

It is a race that moves on the poles of mystic sensual delight. Everygesture is a gesture from the blood, every expression is a symbolicutterance. 

For learning there is sensuous experience, for thought there is myth anddrama and dancing and singing. Everything is of the blood, of thesenses. There is no mind. The mind is a suffusion of physical heat, itis not separated, it is kept submerged. 

At the same time, always, overhead, there is the eternal, negativeradiance of the snows. Beneath is life, the hot jet of the blood playingelaborately. But above is the radiance of changeless not-being. And lifepasses away into this changeless radiance. Summer and the prolificblue-and-white flowering of the earth goes by, with the labour and theecstasy of man, disappears, and is gone into brilliance that hoversoverhead, the radiant cold which waits to receive back again all thatwhich has passed for the moment into being. 

The issue is too much revealed. It leaves the peasant no choice. Thefate gleams transcendent above him, the brightness of eternal, unthinkable not-being. And this our life, this admixture of labour andof warm experience in the flesh, all the time it is steaming up to thechangeless brilliance above, the light of the everlasting snows. This isthe eternal issue. 

Whether it is singing or dancing or play-acting or physical transport oflove, or vengeance or cruelty, or whether it is work or sorrow orreligion, the issue is always the same at last, into the radiantnegation of eternity. Hence the beauty and completeness, the finality ofthe highland peasant. His figure, his limbs, his face, his motion, it isall formed in beauty, and it is all completed. There is no flux nor hopenor becoming, all is, once and for all. The issue is eternal, timeless, and changeless. All being and all passing away is part of the issue, which is eternal and changeless. Therefore there is no becoming and nopassing away. Everything is, now and for ever. Hence the strange beautyand finality and isolation of the Bavarian peasant. 

It is plain in the crucifixes. Here is the essence rendered in sculptureof wood. The face is blank and stiff, almost expressionless. Onerealizes with a start how unchanging and conventionalized is the face ofthe living man and woman of these parts, handsome, but motionless aspure form. There is also an underlying meanness, secretive, cruel. It isall part of the beauty, the pure, plastic beauty. The body also of theChristus is stiff and conventionalized, yet curiously beautiful inproportion, and in the static tension which makes it unified into oneclear thing. There is no movement, no possible movement. The being isfixed, finally. The whole body is locked in one knowledge, beautiful, complete. It is one with the nails. Not that it is languishing or dead. It is stubborn, knowing its own undeniable being, sure of the absolutereality of the sensuous experience. Though he is nailed down upon anirrevocable fate, yet, within that fate he has the power and the delightof all sensuous experience. So he accepts the fate and the mysticdelight of the senses with one will, he is complete and final. Hissensuous experience is supreme, a consummation of life and deathat once. 

It is the same at all times, whether it is moving with the scythe on thehill-slopes, or hewing the timber, or steering the raft down the riverwhich is all effervescent with ice; whether it is drinking in theGasthaus, or making love, or playing some mummer's part, or hatingsteadily and cruelly, or whether it is kneeling in spellbound subjectionin the incense-filled church, or walking in the strange, dark, subject-procession to bless the fields, or cutting the young birch-treesfor the feast of Frohenleichnam, it is always the same, the dark, powerful mystic, sensuous experience is the whole of him, he is mindlessand bound within the absoluteness of the issue, the unchangeability ofthe great icy not-being which holds good for ever, and is supreme. 

Passing further away, towards Austria, travelling up the Isar, till thestream becomes smaller and whiter and the air is colder, the fullglamour of the northern hills, which are so marvellously luminous andgleaming with flowers, wanes and gives way to a darkness, a sense ofominousness. Up there I saw another little Christ, who seemed the verysoul of the place. The road went beside the river, that was seethingwith snowy ice-bubbles, under the rocks and the high, wolf-likepine-trees, between the pinkish shoals. The air was cold and hard andhigh, everything was cold and separate. And in a little glass casebeside the road sat a small, hewn Christ, the head resting on the hand;and he meditates, half-wearily, doggedly, the eyebrows lifted in strangeabstraction, the elbow resting on the knee. Detached, he sits and dreamsand broods, wearing his little golden crown of thorns, and his littlecloak of red flannel that some peasant woman has stitched for him. 

No doubt he still sits there, the small, blank-faced Christ in the cloakof red flannel, dreaming, brooding, enduring, persisting. There is awistfulness about him, as if he knew that the whole of things was toomuch for him. There was no solution, either, in death. Death did notgive the answer to the soul's anxiety. That which is, is. It does notcease to be when it is cut. Death cannot create nor destroy. Whatis, is. 

The little brooding Christ knows this. What is he brooding, then? Hisstatic patience and endurance is wistful. What is it that he secretlyyearns for, amid all the placidity of fate? 'To be, or not to be, ' thismay be the question, but is it not a question for death to answer. It isnot a question of living or not-living. It is a question of being--to beor not to be. To persist or not to persist, that is not the question;neither is it to endure or not to endure. The issue, is it eternalnot-being? If not, what, then, is being? For overhead the eternalradiance of the snow gleams unfailing, it receives the efflorescence ofall life and is unchanged, the issue is bright and immortal, the snowynot-being. What, then, is being?

As one draws nearer to the turning-point of the Alps, towards theculmination and the southern slope, the influence of the educated worldis felt once more. Bavaria is remote in spirit, as yet unattached. Itscrucifixes are old and grey and abstract, small like the kernel of thetruth. Further into Austria they become new, they are painted white, they are larger, more obtrusive. They are the expressions of a later, newer phase, more introspective and self-conscious. But still they aregenuine expressions of the people's soul. 

Often one can distinguish the work of a particular artist here and therein a district. In the Zemm valley, in the heart of the Tyrol, behindInnsbruck, there are five or six crucifixes by one sculptor. He is nolonger a peasant working out an idea, conveying a dogma. He is anartist, trained and conscious, probably working in Vienna. He isconsciously trying to convey a _feeling_, he is no longer strivingawkwardly to render a truth, a religious fact. 

The chief of his crucifixes stands deep in the Klamm, in the dank gorgewhere it is always half-night. The road runs under the rock and thetrees, half-way up the one side of the pass. Below, the stream rushesceaselessly, embroiled among great stones, making an endless loud noise. The rock face opposite rises high overhead, with the sky far up. So thatone is walking in a half-night, an underworld. And just below the path, where the pack-horses go climbing to the remote, infolded villages, inthe cold gloom of the pass hangs the large, pale Christ. He is largerthan life-size. He has fallen forward, just dead, and the weight of thefull-grown, mature body hangs on the nails of the hands. So the dead, heavy body drops forward, sags, as if it would tear away and fall underits own weight. 

It is the end. The face is barren with a dead expression of weariness, and brutalized with pain and bitterness. The rather ugly, passionatemouth is set for ever in the disillusionment of death. Death is thecomplete disillusionment, set like a seal over the whole body and being, over the suffering and weariness and the bodily passion. 

The pass is gloomy and damp, the water roars unceasingly, till it isalmost like a constant pain. The driver of the pack-horses, as he comesup the narrow path in the side of the gorge, cringes his sturdycheerfulness as if to obliterate himself, drawing near to the large, pale Christ, and he takes his hat off as he passes, though he does notlook up, but keeps his face averted from the crucifix. He hurries by inthe gloom, climbing the steep path after his horses, and the large whiteChrist hangs extended above. 

The driver of the pack-horses is afraid. The fear is always there inhim, in spite of his sturdy, healthy robustness. His soul is not sturdy. It is blenched and whitened with fear. The mountains are dark overhead, the water roars in the gloom below. His heart is ground between themill-stones of dread. When he passes the extended body of the deadChrist he takes off his hat to the Lord of Death. Christ is the DeathlyOne, He is Death incarnate. 

And the driver of the pack-horses acknowledges this deathly Christ assupreme Lord. The mountain peasant seems grounded upon fear, the fear ofdeath, of physical death. Beyond this he knows nothing. His supremesensation is in physical pain, and in its culmination. His great climax, his consummation, is death. Therefore he worships it, bows down beforeit, and is fascinated by it all the while. It is his fulfilment, death, and his approach to fulfilment is through physical pain. 

And so these monuments to physical death are found everywhere in thevalleys. By the same hand that carved the big Christ, a little furtheron, at the end of a bridge, was another crucifix, a small one. ThisChrist had a fair beard, and was thin, and his body was hanging almostlightly, whereas the other Christ was large and dark and handsome. Butin this, as well as in the other, was the same neutral triumph of death, complete, negative death, so complete as to be abstract, beyond cynicismin its completeness of leaving off. 

Everywhere is the same obsession with the fact of physical pain, accident, and sudden death. Wherever a misfortune has befallen a man, there is nailed up a little memorial of the event, in propitiation ofthe God of hurt and death. A man is standing up to his waist in water, drowning in full stream, his arms in the air. The little painting in itswooden frame is nailed to the tree, the spot is sacred to the accident. Again, another little crude picture fastened to a rock: a tree, fallingon a man's leg, smashes it like a stalk, while the blood flies up. Always there is the strange ejaculation of anguish and fear, perpetuatedin the little paintings nailed up in the place of the disaster. 

This is the worship, then, the worship of death and the approaches todeath, physical violence, and pain. There is something crude andsinister about it, almost like depravity, a form of reverting, turningback along the course of blood by which we have come. 

Turning the ridge on the great road to the south, the imperial road toRome, a decisive change takes place. The Christs have been taking onvarious different characters, all of them more or less realisticallyconveyed. One Christus is very elegant, combed and brushed and foppishon his cross, as Gabriele D'Annunzio's son posing as a martyred saint. The martyrdom of this Christ is according to the most polite convention. The elegance is very important, and very Austrian. One might almostimagine the young man had taken up this striking and original positionto create a delightful sensation among the ladies. It is quite in theViennese spirit. There is something brave and keen in it, too. Theindividual pride of body triumphs over every difficulty in thesituation. The pride and satisfaction in the clean, elegant form, theperfectly trimmed hair, the exquisite bearing, are more important thanthe fact of death or pain. This may be foolish, it is at the same timeadmirable. 

But the tendency of the crucifix, as it nears the ridge to the south, isto become weak and sentimental. The carved Christs turn up their facesand roll back their eyes very piteously, in the approved Guido Renifashion. They are overdoing the pathetic turn. They are looking toheaven and thinking about themselves, in self-commiseration. Othersagain are beautiful as elegies. It is dead Hyacinth lifted and extendedto view, in all his beautiful, dead youth. The young, male body droopsforward on the cross, like a dead flower. It looks as if its only truenature were to be dead. How lovely is death, how poignant, real, satisfying! It is the true elegiac spirit. 

Then there are the ordinary, factory-made Christs, which are not verysignificant. They are as null as the Christs we see represented inEngland, just vulgar nothingness. But these figures have gashes of red, a red paint of blood, which is sensational. 

Beyond the Brenner, I have only seen vulgar or sensational crucifixes. There are great gashes on the breast and the knees of the Christ-figure, and the scarlet flows out and trickles down, till the crucified body hasbecome a ghastly striped thing of red and white, just a sickly thing ofstriped red. 

They paint the rocks at the corners of the tracks, among the mountains;a blue and white ring for the road to Ginzling, a red smear for the wayto St Jakob. So one follows the blue and white ring, or the threestripes of blue and white, or the red smear, as the case may be. And thered on the rocks, the dabs of red paint, are of just the same colour asthe red upon the crucifixes; so that the red upon the crucifixes ispaint, and the signs on the rocks are sensational, like blood. 

I remember the little brooding Christ of the Isar, in his little cloakof red flannel and his crown of gilded thorns, and he remains real anddear to me, among all this violence of representation. 

'_Couvre-toi de gloire, Tartarin--couvre-toi de flanelle. _' Why shouldit please me so that his cloak is of red flannel?

In a valley near St Jakob, just over the ridge, a long way from therailway, there is a very big, important shrine by the roadside. It is achapel built in the baroque manner, florid pink and cream outside, withopulent small arches. And inside is the most startling sensationalChristus I have ever seen. He is a big, powerful man, seated after thecrucifixion, perhaps after the resurrection, sitting by the grave. Hesits sideways, as if the extremity were over, finished, the agitationdone with, only the result of the experience remaining. There is someblood on his powerful, naked, defeated body, that sits rather hulked. But it is the face which is so terrifying. It is slightly turned overthe hulked, crucified shoulder, to look. And the look of this face, ofwhich the body has been killed, is beyond all expectation horrible. Theeyes look at one, yet have no seeing in them, they seem to see onlytheir own blood. For they are bloodshot till the whites are scarlet, theiris is purpled. These red, bloody eyes with their stained pupils, glancing awfully at all who enter the shrine, looking as if to seethrough the blood of the late brutal death, are terrible. The naked, strong body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished, hulked, a weight of shame. And what remains of life is in the face, whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelentingcriminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred onthe fixed, violated face and in the bloodshot eyes is almost impossible. He is conquered, beaten, broken, his body is a mass of torture, anunthinkable shame. Yet his will remains obstinate and ugly, integralwith utter hatred. 

It is a great shock to find this figure sitting in a handsome, baroque, pink-washed shrine in one of those Alpine valleys which to our thinkingare all flowers and romance, like the picture in the Tate Gallery. 'Spring in the Austrian Tyrol' is to our minds a vision of pristineloveliness. It contains also this Christ of the heavy body defiled bytorture and death, the strong, virile life overcome by physicalviolence, the eyes still looking back bloodshot in consummate hateand misery. 

The shrine was well kept and evidently much used. It was hung withex-voto limbs and with many gifts. It was a centre of worship, of a sortof almost obscene worship. Afterwards the black pine-trees and the riverof that valley seemed unclean, as if an unclean spirit lived there. Thevery flowers seemed unnatural, and the white gleam on the mountain-topswas a glisten of supreme, cynical horror. 

After this, in the populous valleys, all the crucifixes were more orless tainted and vulgar. Only high up, where the crucifix becomessmaller and smaller, is there left any of the old beauty and religion. Higher and higher, the monument becomes smaller and smaller, till in thesnows it stands out like a post, or a thick arrow stuck barb upwards. The crucifix itself is a small thing under the pointed hood, the barb ofthe arrow. The snow blows under the tiny shed, upon the little, exposedChrist. All round is the solid whiteness of snow, the awful curves andconcaves of pure whiteness of the mountain top, the hollow whitenessbetween the peaks, where the path crosses the high, extreme ridge of thepass. And here stands the last crucifix, half buried, small and tuftedwith snow. The guides tramp slowly, heavily past, not observing thepresence of the symbol, making no salute. Further down, every mountainpeasant lifted his hat. But the guide tramps by without concern. His isa professional importance now. 

On a small mountain track on the Jaufen, not far from Meran, was afallen Christus. I was hurrying downhill to escape from an icy windwhich almost took away my consciousness, and I was looking up at thegleaming, unchanging snow-peaks all round. They seemed like bladesimmortal in the sky. So I almost ran into a very old Martertafel. Itleaned on the cold, stony hillside surrounded by the white peaks in theupper air. 

The wooden hood was silver-grey with age, and covered, on the top, witha thicket of lichen, which stuck up in hoary tufts. But on the rock atthe foot of the post was the fallen Christ, armless, who had tumbleddown and lay in an unnatural posture, the naked, ancient woodensculpture of the body on the naked, living rock. It was one of the olduncouth Christs hewn out of bare wood, having the long, wedge-shapedlimbs and thin flat legs that are significant of the true spirit, thedesire to convey a religious truth, not a sensational experience. 

The arms of the fallen Christ had broken off at the shoulders, and theyhung on their nails, as ex-voto limbs hang in the shrines. But thesearms dangled from the palms, one at each end of the cross, the muscles, carved sparely in the old wood, looking all wrong, upside down. And theicy wind blew them backwards and forwards, so that they gave a painfulimpression, there in the stark, sterile place of rock and cold. Yet Idared not touch the fallen body of the Christ, that lay on its back inso grotesque a posture at the foot of the post. I wondered who wouldcome and take the broken thing away, and for what purpose. 

_On the Lago di Garda_

_1_

THE SPINNER AND THE MONKS

The Holy Spirit is a Dove, or an Eagle. In the Old Testament it was anEagle; in the New Testament it is a Dove. 

And there are, standing over the Christian world, the Churches of theDove and the Churches of the Eagle. There are, moreover, the Churcheswhich do not belong to the Holy Spirit at all, but which are built topure fancy and logic; such as the Wren Churches in London. 

The Churches of the Dove are shy and hidden: they nestle among trees, and their bells sound in the mellowness of Sunday; or they are gatheredinto a silence of their own in the very midst of the town, so that onepasses them by without observing them; they are as if invisible, offering no resistance to the storming of the traffic. 

But the Churches of the Eagle stand high, with their heads to the skies, as if they challenged the world below. They are the Churches of theSpirit of David, and their bells ring passionately, imperiously, fallingon the subservient world below. 

The Church of San Francesco was a Church of the Dove. I passed itseveral times in the dark, silent little square, without knowing it wasa church. Its pink walls were blind, windowless, unnoticeable, it gaveno sign, unless one caught sight of the tan curtain hanging in the door, and the slit of darkness beneath. Yet it was the chief church ofthe village. 

But the Church of San Tommaso perched over the village. Coming down thecobbled, submerged street, many a time I looked up between the housesand saw the thin old church standing above in the light, as if itperched on the house-roofs. Its thin grey neck was held up stiffly, beyond was a vision of dark foliage, and the high hillside. 

I saw it often, and yet for a long time it never occurred to me that itactually existed. It was like a vision, a thing one does not expect tocome close to. It was there standing away upon the house-tops, against aglamour of foliaged hillside. I was submerged in the village, on theuneven, cobbled street, between old high walls and cavernous shops andthe houses with flights of steps. 

For a long time I knew how the day went, by the imperious clangour ofmidday and evening bells striking down upon the houses and the edge ofthe lake. Yet it did not occur to me to ask where these bells rang. Tillat last my everyday trance was broken in upon, and I knew the ringing ofthe Church of San Tommaso. The church became a living connexion with me. 

So I set out to find it, I wanted to go to it. It was very near. I couldsee it from the piazza by the lake. And the village itself had only afew hundreds of inhabitants. The church must be within a stone's throw. 

Yet I could not find it. I went out of the back door of the house, intothe narrow gully of the back street. Women glanced down at me from thetop of the flights of steps, old men stood, half-turning, half-crouchingunder the dark shadow of the walls, to stare. It was as if the strangecreatures of the under-shadow were looking at me. I was ofanother element. 

The Italian people are called 'Children of the Sun'. They might betterbe called 'Children of the Shadow'. Their souls are dark and nocturnal. If they are to be easy, they must be able to hide, to be hidden in lairsand caves of darkness. Going through these tiny chaotic backways of thevillage was like venturing through the labyrinth made by furtivecreatures, who watched from out of another element. And I was pale, andclear, and evanescent, like the light, and they were dark, and close, and constant, like the shadow. 

So I was quite baffled by the tortuous, tiny, deep passages of thevillage. I could not find my way. I hurried towards the broken end of astreet, where the sunshine and the olive trees looked like a miragebefore me. And there above me I saw the thin, stiff neck of old SanTommaso, grey and pale in the sun. Yet I could not get up to the church, I found myself again on the piazza. 

Another day, however, I found a broken staircase, where weeds grew inthe gaps the steps had made in falling, and maidenhair hung on thedarker side of the wall. I went up unwillingly, because the Italiansused this old staircase as a privy, as they will any deep side-passage. 

But I ran up the broken stairway, and came out suddenly, as by amiracle, clean on the platform of my San Tommaso, in thetremendous sunshine. 

It was another world, the world of the eagle, the world of fierceabstraction. It was all clear, overwhelming sunshine, a platform hung inthe light. Just below were the confused, tiled roofs of the village, andbeyond them the pale blue water, down below; and opposite, opposite myface and breast, the clear, luminous snow of the mountain across thelake, level with me apparently, though really much above. 

I was in the skies now, looking down from my square terrace of cobbledpavement, that was worn like the threshold of the ancient church. Roundthe terrace ran a low, broad wall, the coping of the upper heaven whereI had climbed. 

There was a blood-red sail like a butterfly breathing down on the bluewater, whilst the earth on the near side gave off a green-silver smokeof olive trees, coming up and around the earth-coloured roofs. 

It always remains to me that San Tommaso and its terrace hang suspendedabove the village, like the lowest step of heaven, of Jacob's ladder. Behind, the land rises in a high sweep. But the terrace of San Tommasois let down from heaven, and does not touch the earth. 

I went into the church. It was very dark, and impregnated with centuriesof incense. It affected me like the lair of some enormous creature. Mysenses were roused, they sprang awake in the hot, spiced darkness. Myskin was expectant, as if it expected some contact, some embrace, as ifit were aware of the contiguity of the physical world, the physicalcontact with the darkness and the heavy, suggestive substance of theenclosure. It was a thick, fierce darkness of the senses. But mysoul shrank. 

I went out again. The pavemented threshold was clear as a jewel, themarvellous clarity of sunshine that becomes blue in the height seemed todistil me into itself. 

Across, the heavy mountain crouched along the side of the lake, theupper half brilliantly white, belonging to the sky, the lower half darkand grim. So, then, that is where heaven and earth are divided. Frombehind me, on the left, the headland swept down out of a great, pale-grey, arid height, through a rush of russet and crimson, to theolive smoke and the water of the level earth. And between, like a bladeof the sky cleaving the earth asunder, went the pale-blue lake, cleavingmountain from mountain with the triumph of the sky. 

Then I noticed that a big, blue-checked cloth was spread on the parapetbefore me, over the parapet of heaven. I wondered why it hung there. 

Turning round, on the other side of the terrace, under a caper-bush thathung like a blood-stain from the grey wall above her, stood a littlegrey woman whose fingers were busy. Like the grey church, she made mefeel as if I were not in existence. I was wandering by the parapet ofheaven, looking down. But she stood back against the solid wall, underthe caper-bush, unobserved and unobserving. She was like a fragment ofearth, she was a living stone of the terrace, sun-bleached. She took nonotice of me, who was hesitating looking down at the earth beneath. Shestood back under the sun-bleached solid wall, like a stone rolled downand stayed in a crevice. 

Her head was tied in a dark-red kerchief, but pieces of hair, like dirtysnow, quite short, stuck out over her ears. And she was spinning. Iwondered so much, that I could not cross towards her. She was grey, andher apron, and her dress, and her kerchief, and her hands and her facewere all sun-bleached and sun-stained, greyey, bluey, browny, likestones and half-coloured leaves, sunny in their colourlessness. In myblack coat, I felt myself wrong, false, an outsider. 

She was spinning, spontaneously, like a little wind. Under her arm sheheld a distaff of dark, ripe wood, just a straight stick with a clutchat the end, like a grasp of brown fingers full of a fluff of blackish, rusty fleece, held up near her shoulder. And her fingers were pluckingspontaneously at the strands of wool drawn down from it. And hangingnear her feet, spinning round upon a black thread, spinning busily, likea thing in a gay wind, was her shuttle, her bobbin wound fat with thecoarse, blackish worsted she was making. 

All the time, like motion without thought, her fingers teased out thefleece, drawing it down to a fairly uniform thickness: brown, old, natural fingers that worked as in a sleep, the thumb having a long greynail; and from moment to moment there was a quick, downward rub, betweenthumb and forefinger, of the thread that hung in front of her apron, theheavy bobbin spun more briskly, and she felt again at the fleece as shedrew it down, and she gave a twist to the thread that issued, and thebobbin spun swiftly. 

Her eyes were clear as the sky, blue, empyrean, transcendent. They weredear, but they had no looking in them. Her face was like asun-worn stone. 

'You are spinning, ' I said to her. 

Her eyes glanced over me, making no effort of attention. 

'Yes, ' she said. 

She saw merely a man's figure, a stranger standing near. I was a bit ofthe outside, negligible. She remained as she was, clear and sustainedlike an old stone upon the hillside. She stood short and sturdy, lookingfor the most part straight in front, unseeing, but glancing from time totime, with a little, unconscious attention, at the thread. She wasslightly more animated than the sunshine and the stone and themotionless caper-bush above her. Still her fingers went along the strandof fleece near her breast. 

'That is an old way of spinning, ' I said. 

'What?'

She looked up at me with eyes clear and transcendent as the heavens. Butshe was slightly roused. There was the slight motion of the eagle in herturning to look at me, a faint gleam of rapt light in her eyes. It wasmy unaccustomed Italian. 

'That is an old way of spinning, ' I repeated. 

'Yes--an old way, ' she repeated, as if to say the words so that theyshould be natural to her. And I became to her merely a transientcircumstance, a man, part of the surroundings. We divided the gift ofspeech, that was all. 

She glanced at me again, with her wonderful, unchanging eyes, that werelike the visible heavens, unthinking, or like two flowers that are openin pure clear unconsciousness. To her I was a piece of the environment. That was all. Her world was clear and absolute, without consciousness ofself. She was not self-conscious, because she was not aware that therewas anything in the universe except _her_ universe. In her universe Iwas a stranger, a foreign _signore_. That I had a world of my own, otherthan her own, was not conceived by her. She did not care. 

So we conceive the stars. We are told that they are other worlds. Butthe stars are the clustered and single gleaming lights in the night-skyof our world. When I come home at night, there are the stars. When Icease to exist as the microcosm, when I begin to think of the cosmos, then the stars are other worlds. Then the macrocosm absorbs me. But themacrocosm is not me. It is something which I, the microcosm, am not. 

So that there is something which is unknown to me and which neverthelessexists. I am finite, and my understanding has limits. The universe isbigger than I shall ever see, in mind or spirit. There is that whichis not me. 

If I say 'The planet Mars is inhabited, ' I do not know what I mean by'inhabited', with reference to the planet Mars. I can only mean thatthat world is not my world. I can only know there is that which is notme. I am the microcosm, but the macrocosm is that also which I am not. 

The old woman on the terrace in the sun did not know this. She washerself the core and centre to the world, the sun, and the singlefirmament. She knew that I was an inhabitant of lands which she hadnever seen. But what of that! There were parts of her own body which shehad never seen, which physiologically she could never see. They werenone the less her own because she had never seen them. The lands she hadnot seen were corporate parts of her own living body, the knowledge shehad not attained was only the hidden knowledge of her own self. She_was_ the substance of the knowledge, whether she had the knowledge inher mind or not. There was nothing which was not herself, ultimately. Even the man, the male, was part of herself. He was the mobile, separatepart, but he was none the less herself because he was sometimes severedfrom her. If every apple in the world were cut in two, the apple wouldnot be changed. The reality is the apple, which is just the same in thehalf-apple as in the whole. 

And she, the old spinning-woman, was the apple, eternal, unchangeable, whole even in her partiality. It was this which gave the wonderful clearunconsciousness to her eyes. How could she be conscious of herself whenall was herself?

She was talking to me of a sheep that had died, but I could notunderstand because of her dialect. It never occurred to her that I couldnot understand. She only thought me different, stupid. And she talkedon. The ewes had lived under the house, and a part was divided off forthe he-goat, because the other people brought their she-goats to becovered by the he-goat. But how the ewe came to die I could notmake out. 

Her fingers worked away all the time in a little, half-fretful movement, yet spontaneous as butterflies leaping here and there. She chatteredrapidly on in her Italian that I could not understand, looking meanwhileinto my face, because the story roused her somewhat. Yet not a featuremoved. Her eyes remained candid and open and unconscious as the skies. Only a sharp will in them now and then seemed to gleam at me, as if todominate me. 

Her shuttle had caught in a dead chicory plant, and spun no more. Shedid not notice. I stooped and broke off the twigs. There was a glint ofblue on them yet. Seeing what I was doing, she merely withdrew a fewinches from the plant. Her bobbin hung free. 

She went on with her tale, looking at me wonderfully. She seemed likethe Creation, like the beginning of the world, the first morning. Hereyes were like the first morning of the world, so ageless. 

Her thread broke. She seemed to take no notice, but mechanically pickedup the shuttle, wound up a length of worsted, connected the ends fromher wool strand, set the bobbin spinning again, and went on talking, inher half-intimate, half-unconscious fashion, as if she were talking toher own world in me. 

So she stood in the sunshine on the little platform, old and yet likethe morning, erect and solitary, sun-coloured, sun-discoloured, whilst Iat her elbow, like a piece of night and moonshine, stood smiling intoher eyes, afraid lest she should deny me existence. 

Which she did. She had stopped talking, did not look at me any more, butwent on with her spinning, the brown shuttle twisting gaily. So shestood, belonging to the sunshine and the weather, taking no more noticeof me than of the dark-stained caper-bush which hung from the wall aboveher head, whilst I, waiting at her side, was like the moon in thedaytime sky, overshone, obliterated, in spite of my black clothes. 

'How long has it taken you to do that much?' I asked. 

She waited a minute, glanced at her bobbin. 

'This much? I don't know. A day or two. '

'But you do it quickly. '

She looked at me, as if suspiciously and derisively. Then, quitesuddenly, she started forward and went across the terrace to the greatblue-and-white checked cloth that was drying on the wall. I hesitated. She had cut off her consciousness from me. So I turned and ran away, taking the steps two at a time, to get away from her. In a moment I wasbetween the walls, climbing upwards, hidden. 

The schoolmistress had told me I should find snowdrops behind SanTommaso. If she had not asserted such confident knowledge I should havedoubted her translation of _perce-neige_. She meant Christmas roses allthe while. 

However, I went looking for snowdrops. The walls broke down suddenly, and I was out in a grassy olive orchard, following a track beside piecesof fallen overgrown masonry. So I came to skirt the brink of a steeplittle gorge, at the bottom of which a stream was rushing down its steepslant to the lake. Here I stood to look for my snowdrops. The grassy, rocky bank went down steep from my feet. I heard water tittle-tattlingaway in deep shadow below. There were pale flecks in the dimness, butthese, I knew, were primroses. So I scrambled down. 

Looking up, out of the heavy shadow that lay in the cleft, I could see, right in the sky, grey rocks shining transcendent in the pure empyrean. 'Are they so far up?' I thought. I did not dare to say, 'Am I so fardown?' But I was uneasy. Nevertheless it was a lovely place, in the coldshadow, complete; when one forgot the shining rocks far above, it was acomplete, shadowless world of shadow. Primroses were everywhere in nestsof pale bloom upon the dark, steep face of the cleft, and tongues offern hanging out, and here and there under the rods and twigs of busheswere tufts of wrecked Christmas roses, nearly over, but still, in thecoldest corners, the lovely buds like handfuls of snow. There had beensuch crowded sumptuous tufts of Christmas roses everywhere in thestream-gullies, during the shadow of winter, that these few remainingflowers were hardly noticeable. 

I gathered instead the primroses, that smelled of earth and of theweather. There were no snowdrops. I had found the day before a bank ofcrocuses, pale, fragile, lilac-coloured flowers with dark veins, pricking up keenly like myriad little lilac-coloured flames among thegrass, under the olive trees. And I wanted very much to find thesnowdrops hanging in the gloom. But there were not any. 

I gathered a handful of primroses, then I climbed suddenly, quickly outof the deep watercourse, anxious to get back to the sunshine before theevening fell. Up above I saw the olive trees in the sunny golden grass, and sunlit grey rocks immensely high up. I was afraid lest the eveningwould fall whilst I was groping about like an otter in the damp and thedarkness, that the day of sunshine would be over. 

Soon I was up in the sunshine again, on the turf under the olive trees, reassured. It was the upper world of glowing light, and I wassafe again. 

All the olives were gathered, and the mills were going night and day, making a great, acrid scent of olive oil in preparation, by the lake. The little stream rattled down. A mule driver 'Hued!' to his mules onthe Strada Vecchia. High up, on the Strada Nuova, the beautiful, new, military high-road, which winds with beautiful curves up themountain-side, crossing the same stream several times in clear-leapingbridges, travelling cut out of sheer slope high above the lake, windingbeautifully and gracefully forward to the Austrian frontier, where itends: high up on the lovely swinging road, in the strong eveningsunshine, I saw a bullock wagon moving like a vision, though theclanking of the wagon and the crack of the bullock whip responded closein my ears. 

Everything was clear and sun-coloured up there, clear-grey rockspartaking of the sky, tawny grass and scrub, browny-green spires ofcypresses, and then the mist of grey-green olives fuming down to thelake-side. There was no shadow, only clear sun-substance built up to thesky, a bullock wagon moving slowly in the high sunlight, along theuppermost terrace of the military road. It sat in the warm stillness ofthe transcendent afternoon. 

The four o'clock steamer was creeping down the lake from the Austrianend, creeping under the cliffs. Far away, the Verona side, beyond theIsland, lay fused in dim gold. The mountain opposite was so still, thatmy heart seemed to fade in its beating as if it too would be still. Allwas perfectly still, pure substance. The little steamer on the floor ofthe world below, the mules down the road cast no shadow. They too werepure sun-substance travelling on the surface of the sun-made world. 

A cricket hopped near me. Then I remembered that it was Saturdayafternoon, when a strange suspension comes over the world. And then, just below me, I saw two monks walking in their garden between thenaked, bony vines, walking in their wintry garden of bony vines andolive trees, their brown cassocks passing between the brown vine-stocks, their heads bare to the sunshine, sometimes a glint of light as theirfeet strode from under their skirts. 

It was so still, everything so perfectly suspended, that I felt themtalking. They marched with the peculiar march of monks, a long, lopingstride, their heads together, their skirts swaying slowly, two brownmonks with hidden hands, sliding under the bony vines and beside thecabbages, their heads always together in hidden converse. It was as if Iwere attending with my dark soul to their inaudible undertone. All thetime I sat still in silence, I was one with them, a partaker, though Icould hear no sound of their voices. I went with the long stride oftheir skirted feet, that slid springless and noiseless from end to endof the garden, and back again. Their hands were kept down at theirsides, hidden in the long sleeves, and the skirts of their robes. Theydid not touch each other, nor gesticulate as they walked. There was nomotion save the long, furtive stride and the heads leaning together. Yetthere was an eagerness in their conversation. Almost likeshadow-creatures ventured out of their cold, obscure element, they wentbackwards and forwards in their wintry garden, thinking nobody couldsee them. 

Across, above them, was the faint, rousing dazzle of snow. They neverlooked up. But the dazzle of snow began to glow as they walked, thewonderful, faint, ethereal flush of the long range of snow in theheavens, at evening, began to kindle. Another world was coming to pass, the cold, rare night. It was dawning in exquisite, icy rose upon thelong mountain-summit opposite. The monks walked backwards and forwards, talking, in the first undershadow. 

And I noticed that up above the snow, frail in the bluish sky, a frailmoon had put forth, like a thin, scalloped film of ice floated out onthe slow current of the coming night. And a bell sounded. 

And still the monks were pacing backwards and forwards, backwards andforwards, with a strange, neutral regularity. 

The shadows were coming across everything, because of the mountains inthe west. Already the olive wood where I sat was extinguished. This wasthe world of the monks, the rim of pallor between night and day. Herethey paced, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, in theneutral, shadowless light of shadow. 

Neither the flare of day nor the completeness of night reached them, they paced the narrow path of the twilight, treading in the neutralityof the law. Neither the blood nor the spirit spoke in them, only thelaw, the abstraction of the average. The infinite is positive andnegative. But the average is only neutral. And the monks trod backwardand forward down the line of neutrality. 

Meanwhile, on the length of mountain-ridge, the snow grewrosy-incandescent, like heaven breaking into blossom. After all, eternalnot-being and eternal being are the same. In the rosy snow that shone inheaven over a darkened earth was the ecstasy of consummation. Night andday are one, light and dark are one, both the same in the origin and inthe issue, both the same in the moment, of ecstasy, light fused indarkness and darkness fused in light, as in the rosy snow abovethe twilight. 

But in the monks it was not ecstasy, in them it was neutrality, theunder earth. Transcendent, above the shadowed, twilit earth was the rosysnow of ecstasy. But spreading far over us, down below, was theneutrality of the twilight, of the monks. The flesh neutralizing thespirit, the spirit neutralizing the flesh, the law of the averageasserted, this was the monks as they paced backward and forward. 

The moon climbed higher, away from the snowy, fading ridge, she becamegradually herself. Between the roots of the olive tree was a rosy-tippeddaisy just going to sleep. I gathered it and put it among the frail, moony little bunch of primroses, so that its sleep should warm the rest. Also I put in some little periwinkles, that were very blue, reminding meof the eyes of the old woman. 

The day was gone, the twilight was gone, and the snow was invisible as Icame down to the side of the lake. Only the moon, white and shining, wasin the sky, like a woman glorying in her own loveliness as she loiterssuperbly to the gaze of all the world, looking sometimes through thefringe of dark olive leaves, sometimes looking at her own superb, quivering body, wholly naked in the water of the lake. 

My little old woman was gone. She, all day-sunshine, would have none ofthe moon. Always she must live like a bird, looking down on all theworld at once, so that it lay all subsidiary to herself, herself thewakeful consciousness hovering over the world like a hawk, like a sleepof wakefulness. And, like a bird, she went to sleep as the shadows came. 

She did not know the yielding up of the senses and the possession of theunknown, through the senses, which happens under a superb moon. Theall-glorious sun knows none of these yieldings up. He takes his way. Andthe daisies at once go to sleep. And the soul of the old spinning-womanalso closed up at sunset, the rest was a sleep, a cessation. 

It is all so strange and varied: the dark-skinned Italians ecstatic inthe night and the moon, the blue-eyed old woman ecstatic in the busysunshine, the monks in the garden below, who are supposed to unite both, passing only in the neutrality of the average. Where, then, is themeeting-point: where in mankind is the ecstasy of light and darktogether, the supreme transcendence of the afterglow, day hovering inthe embrace of the coming night like two angels embracing in theheavens, like Eurydice in the arms of Orpheus, or Persephone embracedby Pluto?

Where is the supreme ecstasy in mankind, which makes day a delight andnight a delight, purpose an ecstasy and a concourse in ecstasy, andsingle abandon of the single body and soul also an ecstasy under themoon? Where is the transcendent knowledge in our hearts, uniting sun anddarkness, day and night, spirit and senses? Why do we not know that thetwo in consummation are one; that each is only part; partial and alonefor ever; but that the two in consummation are perfect, beyond the rangeof loneliness or solitude?

_2_

THE LEMON GARDENS

The padrone came just as we were drinking coffee after dinner. It wastwo o'clock, because the steamer going down the lake to Desenzano hadbustled through the sunshine, and the rocking of the water still madelights that danced up and down upon the wall among the shadows bythe piano. 

The signore was very apologetic. I found him bowing in the hall, cap inone hand, a slip of paper in the other, protesting eagerly, in brokenFrench, against disturbing me. 

He is a little, shrivelled man, with close-cropped grey hair on hisskull, and a protruding jaw, which, with his gesticulations, alwaysmakes me think of an ancient, aristocratic monkey. The signore is agentleman, and the last, shrivelled representative of his race. His onlyoutstanding quality, according to the villagers, is his avarice. 

_'Mais--mais, monsieur--je crains que--que--que je vous dérange--'_

He spreads wide his hands and bows, looking up at me with implicit browneyes, so ageless in his wrinkled, monkey's face, like onyx. He loves tospeak French, because then he feels grand. He has a queer, naïve, ancient passion to be grand. As the remains of an impoverished family, he is not much better than a well-to-do peasant. But the old spirit iseager and pathetic in him. 

He loves to speak French to me. He holds his chin and waits, in hisanxiety for the phrase to come. Then it stammers forth, a little rush, ending in Italian. But his pride is all on edge: we must continuein French. 

The hall is cold, yet he will not come into the large room. This is nota courtesy visit. He is not here in his quality of gentleman. He is onlyan anxious villager. 

'_Voyez, monsieur--cet--cet--qu'est-ce que--qu'est-ce que veut direcet--cela?_'

He shows me the paper. It is an old scrap of print, the picture of anAmerican patent door-spring, with directions: 'Fasten the spring eitherend up. Wind it up. Never unwind. '

It is laconic and American. The signore watches me anxiously, waiting, holding his chin. He is afraid he ought to understand my English. Istutter off into French, confounded by the laconic phrases of thedirections. Nevertheless, I make it clear what the paper says. 

He cannot believe me. It must say something else as well. He has notdone anything contrary to these directions. He is most distressed. 

'_Mais, monsieur, la porte--la porte--elle ferme_ pas--_elle s'ouvre_--'

He skipped to the door and showed me the whole tragic mystery. The door, it is shut--_ecco_! He releases the catch, and pouf!--she flies open. She flies _open_. It is quite final. 

The brown, expressionless, ageless eyes, that remind me of a monkey's, or of onyx, wait for me. I feel the responsibility devolve upon me. Iam anxious. 

'Allow me, ' I said, 'to come and look at the door. '

I feel uncomfortably like Sherlock Holmes. The padrone protests--_non, monsieur, non, cela vous dérange_--that he only wanted me to translatethe words, he does not want to disturb me. Nevertheless, we go. I feel Ihave the honour of mechanical England in my hands. 

The Casa di Paoli is quite a splendid place. It is large, pink andcream, rising up to a square tower in the centre, throwing off a paintedloggia at either extreme of the façade. It stands a little way back fromthe road, just above the lake, and grass grows on the bay of cobbledpavement in front. When at night the moon shines full on this palefaçade, the theatre is far outdone in staginess. 

The hall is spacious and beautiful, with great glass doors at eitherend, through which shine the courtyards where bamboos fray the sunlightand geraniums glare red. The floor is of soft red tiles, oiled andpolished like glass, the walls are washed grey-white, the ceiling ispainted with pink roses and birds. This is half-way between the outerworld and the interior world, it partakes of both. 

The other rooms are dark and ugly. There is no mistake about their beinginterior. They are like furnished vaults. The red-tiled, polished floorin the drawing-room seems cold and clammy, the carved, cold furniturestands in its tomb, the air has been darkened and starved to death, itis perished. 

Outside, the sunshine runs like birds singing. Up above, the grey rocksbuild the sun-substance in heaven, San Tommaso guards the terrace. Butinside here is the immemorial shadow. 

Again I had to think of the Italian soul, how it is dark, cleaving tothe eternal night. It seems to have become so, at the Renaissance, afterthe Renaissance. 

In the Middle Ages Christian Europe seems to have been striving, out ofa strong, primitive, animal nature, towards the self-abnegation and theabstraction of Christ. This brought about by itself a great sense ofcompleteness. The two halves were joined by the effort towards the oneas yet unrealized. There was a triumphant joy in the Whole. 

But the movement all the time was in one direction, towards theelimination of the flesh. Man wanted more and more to become purely freeand abstract. Pure freedom was in pure abstraction. The Word wasabsolute. When man became as the Word, a pure law, then he was free. 

But when this conclusion was reached, the movement broke. AlreadyBotticelli painted Aphrodite, queen of the senses, supreme along withMary, Queen of Heaven. And Michelangelo suddenly turned back on thewhole Christian movement, back to the flesh. The flesh was supreme andgod-like, in the oneness of the flesh, in the oneness of our physicalbeing, we are one with God, with the Father. God the Father created manin the flesh, in His own image. Michelangelo swung right back to the oldMosaic position. Christ did not exist. To Michelangelo there was nosalvation in the spirit. There was God the Father, the Begetter, theAuthor of all flesh. And there was the inexorable law of the flesh, theLast Judgement, the fall of the immortal flesh into Hell. 

This has been the Italian position ever since. The mind, that is theLight; the senses, they are the Darkness. Aphrodite, the queen of thesenses, she, born of the sea-foam, is the luminousness of the gleamingsenses, the phosphorescence of the sea, the senses become a consciousaim unto themselves; she is the gleaming darkness, she is the luminousnight, she is goddess of destruction, her white, cold fire consumes anddoes not create. 

This is the soul of the Italian since the Renaissance. In the sunshinehe basks asleep, gathering up a vintage into his veins which in thenight-time he will distil into ecstatic sensual delight, the intense, white-cold ecstasy of darkness and moonlight, the raucous, cat-like, destructive enjoyment, the senses conscious and crying out in theirconsciousness in the pangs of the enjoyment, which has consumed thesouthern nation, perhaps all the Latin races, since the Renaissance. 

It is a lapse back, back to the original position, the Mosaic position, of the divinity of the flesh, and the absoluteness of its laws. But alsothere is the Aphrodite-worship. The flesh, the senses, are nowself-conscious. They know their aim. Their aim is in supreme sensation. They seek the maximum of sensation. They seek the reduction of theflesh, the flesh reacting upon itself, to a crisis, an ecstasy, aphosphorescent transfiguration in ecstasy. 

The mind, all the time, subserves the senses. As in a cat, there issubtlety and beauty and the dignity of the darkness. But the fire iscold, as in the eyes of a cat, it is a green fire. It is fluid, electric. At its maximum it is the white ecstasy of phosphorescence, inthe darkness, always amid the darkness, as under the black fur of a cat. Like the feline fire, it is destructive, always consuming and reducingto the ecstasy of sensation, which is the end in itself. 

There is the I, always the I. And the mind is submerged, overcome. Butthe senses are superbly arrogant. The senses are the absolute, thegod-like. For I can never have another man's senses. These are me, mysenses absolutely me. And all that is can only come to me through mysenses. So that all is me, and is administered unto me. The rest, thatis not me, is nothing, it is something which is nothing. So the Italian, through centuries, has avoided our Northern purposive industry, becauseit has seemed to him a form of nothingness. 

It is the spirit of the tiger. The tiger is the supreme manifestation ofthe senses made absolute. This is the

 Tiger, tiger burning bright, In the forests of the night

of Blake. It does indeed burn within the darkness. But the_essential_ fate, of the tiger is cold and white, a white ecstasy. It is seen in the white eyes of the blazing cat. This is the supremacyof the flesh, which devours all, and becomes transfigured into amagnificent brindled flame, a burning bush indeed. 

This is one way of transfiguration into the eternal flame, thetransfiguration through ecstasy in the flesh. Like the tiger in thenight, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until this fuel blazes upin me to the consummate fire of the Infinite. In the ecstacy I amInfinite, I become again the great Whole, I am a flame of the One WhiteFlame which is the Infinite, the Eternal, the Originator, the Creator, the Everlasting God. In the sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood anddevoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire, I am infinite. 

This is the way of the tiger; the tiger is supreme. His head isflattened as if there were some great weight on the hard skull, pressing, pressing, pressing the mind into a stone, pressing it downunder the blood, to serve the blood. It is the subjugate instrument ofthe blood. The will lies above the loins, as it were at the base of thespinal column, there is the living will, the living mind of the tiger, there in the slender loins. That is the node, there in the spinal cord. 

So the Italian, so the soldier. This is the spirit of the soldier. He, too, walks with his consciousness concentrated at the base of the spine, his mind subjugated, submerged. The will of the soldier is the will ofthe great cats, the will to ecstasy in destruction, in absorbing lifeinto his own life, always his own life supreme, till the ecstasy burstinto the white, eternal flame, the Infinite, the Flame of the Infinite. Then he is satisfied, he has been consummated in the Infinite. 

This is the true soldier, this is the immortal climax of the senses. This is the acme of the flesh, the one superb tiger who has devoured allliving flesh, and now paces backwards and forwards in the cage of itsown infinite, glaring with blind, fierce, absorbed eyes at that which isnothingness to it. 

The eyes of the tiger cannot see, except with the light from withinitself, by the light of its own desire. Its own white, cold light is sofierce that the other warm light of day is outshone, it is not, it doesnot exist. So the white eyes of the tiger gleam to a point ofconcentrated vision, upon that which does not exist. Hence itsterrifying sightlessness. The something which I know I am is hollowspace to its vision, offers no resistance to the tiger's looking. It canonly see of me that which it knows I am, a scent, a resistance, avoluptuous solid, a struggling warm violence that it holds overcome, arunning of hot blood between its Jaws, a delicious pang of live flesh inthe mouth. This it sees. The rest is not. 

And what is the rest, that which is-not the tiger, that which the tigeris-not? What is this?

What is that which parted ways with the terrific eagle-like angel of thesenses at the Renaissance? The Italians said, 'We are one in the Father:we will go back. ' The Northern races said, 'We are one in Christ: wewill go on. '

What _is_ the consummation in Christ? Man knows satisfaction when hesurpasses all conditions and becomes, to himself, consummate in theInfinite, when he reaches a state of infinity. In the supreme ecstasyof the flesh, the Dionysic ecstasy, he reaches this state. But how doesit come to pass in Christ?

It is not the mystic ecstasy. The mystic ecstasy is a special sensualecstasy, it is the senses satisfying themselves with a self-createdobject. It is self-projection into the self, the sensuous self satisfiedin a projected self. 

 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

The kingdom of heaven is this Infinite into which we may be consummated, then, if we are poor in spirit or persecuted for righteousness' sake. 

 Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 

 Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. 

 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. 

To be perfect, to be one with God, to be infinite and eternal, whatshall we do? We must turn the other cheek, and love our enemies. 

Christ is the lamb which the eagle swoops down upon, the dove taken bythe hawk, the deer which the tiger devours. 

What then, if a man come to me with a sword, to kill me, and I do notresist him, but suffer his sword and the death from his sword, what amI? Am I greater than he, am I stronger than he? Do I know a consummationin the Infinite, I, the prey, beyond the tiger who devours me? By mynon-resistance I have robbed him of his consummation. For a tiger knowsno consummation unless he kill a violated and struggling prey. There isno consummation merely for the butcher, nor for a hyena. I can rob thetiger of his ecstasy, his consummation, his very __my non-resistance. Inmy non-resistance the tiger is infinitely destroyed. 

But I, what am I? 'Be ye therefore perfect. ' Wherein am I perfect inthis submission? Is there an affirmation, behind my negation, other thanthe tiger's affirmation of his own glorious infinity?

What is the Oneness to which I subscribe, I who offer no resistance inthe flesh?

Have I only the negative ecstasy of being devoured, of becoming thuspart of the Lord, the Great Moloch, the superb and terrible God? I havethis also, this subject ecstasy of consummation. But is therenothing else?

The Word of the tiger is: my senses are supremely Me, and my senses areGod in me. But Christ said: God is in the others, who are not-me. In allthe multitude of the others is God, and this is the great God, greaterthan the God which is Me. God is that which is Not-Me. 

And this is the Christian truth, a truth complementary to the paganaffirmation: 'God is that which is Me. '

God is that which is Not-Me. In realizing the Not-Me I am consummated, Ibecome infinite. In turning the other cheek I submit to God who isgreater than I am, other than I am, who is in that which is not me. Thisis the supreme consummation. To achieve this consummation I love myneighbour as myself. My neighbour is all that is not me. And if I loveall this, have I not become one with the Whole, is not my consummationcomplete, am I not one with God, have I not achieved the Infinite?

After the Renaissance the Northern races continued forward to put intopractice this religious belief in the God which is Not-Me. Even the ideaof the saving of the soul was really negative: it was a question ofescaping damnation. The Puritans made the last great attack on the Godwho is Me. When they beheaded Charles the First, the king by DivineRight, they destroyed, symbolically, for ever, the supremacy of the Mewho am the image of God, the Me of the flesh, of the senses, Me, thetiger burning bright, me the king, the Lord, the aristocrat, me who amdivine because I am the body of God. 

After the Puritans, we have been gathering data for the God who isnot-me. When Pope said 'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, Theproper study of mankind is Man, ' he was stating the proposition: A manis right, he is consummated, when he is seeking to know Man, the greatabstract; and the method of knowledge is by the analysis, which is thedestruction, of the Self. The proposition up to that time was, a man isthe epitome of the universe. He has only to express himself, to fulfilhis desires, to satisfy his supreme senses. 

Now the change has come to pass. The individual man is a limited being, finite in himself. Yet he is capable of apprehending that which is nothimself. 'The proper study of mankind is Man. ' This is another way ofsaying, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. ' Which means, a manis consummated in his knowledge of that which is not himself, theabstract Man. Therefore the consummation lies in seeking that other, inknowing that other. Whereas the Stuart proposition was: 'A man isconsummated in expressing his own Self. '

The new spirit developed into the empirical and ideal systems ofphilosophy. Everything that is, is consciousness. And in every man'sconsciousness, Man is great and illimitable, whilst the individual issmall and fragmentary. Therefore the individual must sink himself in thegreat whole of Mankind. 

This is the spirituality of Shelley, the perfectibility of man. This isthe way in which we fulfil the commandment, 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. ' This is SaintPaul's, 'Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known. '

When a man knows everything and understands everything, then he will beperfect, and life will be blessed. He is capable of knowing everythingand understanding everything. Hence he is justified in his hope ofinfinite freedom and blessedness. 

The great inspiration of the new religion was the inspiration offreedom. When I have submerged or distilled away my concrete body and mylimited desires, when I am like the skylark dissolved in the sky yetfilling heaven and earth with song, then I am perfect, consummated inthe Infinite. When I am all that is not-me, then I have perfect liberty, I know no limitation. Only I must eliminate the Self. 

It was this religious belief which expressed itself in science. Sciencewas the analysis of the outer self, the elementary substance of theself, the outer world. And the machine is the great reconstructedselfless power. Hence the active worship to which we were given at theend of the last century, the worship of mechanized force. 

Still we continue to worship that which is not-me, the Selfless world, though we would fain bring in the Self to help us. We are shouting theShakespearean advice to warriors: 'Then simulate the action of thetiger. ' We are trying to become again the tiger, the supreme, imperial, warlike Self. At the same time our ideal is the selfless worldof equity. 

We continue to give service to the Selfless God, we worship the greatselfless oneness in the spirit, oneness in service of the greathumanity, that which is Not-Me. This selfless God is He who works forall alike, without consideration. And His image is the machine whichdominates and cows us, we cower before it, we run to serve it. For itworks for all humanity alike. 

At the same time, we want to be warlike tigers. That is the horror: theconfusing of the two ends. We warlike tigers fit ourselves out withmachinery, and our blazing tiger wrath is emitted through a machine. Itis a horrible thing to see machines hauled about by tigers, at the mercyof tigers, forced to express the tiger. It is a still more horriblething to see tigers caught up and entangled and torn in machinery. It ishorrible, a chaos beyond chaos, an unthinkable hell. 

The tiger is not wrong, the machine is not wrong, but we, liars, lip-servers, duplicate fools, we are unforgivably wrong. We say: 'I willbe a tiger because I love mankind; out of love for other people, out ofselfless service to that which is not me, I will even become a tiger. 'Which is absurd. A tiger devours because it is consummated in devouring, it achieves its absolute self in devouring. It does not devour becauseits unselfish conscience bids it do so, for the sake of the other deerand doves, or the other tigers. 

Having arrived at the one extreme of mechanical selflessness, weimmediately embrace the other extreme of the transcendent Self. But wetry to be both at once. We do not cease to be the one before we becomethe other. We do not even play the roles in turn. We want to be thetiger and the deer both in one. Which is just ghastly nothingness. Wetry to say, 'The tiger is the lamb and the lamb is the tiger. ' Which isnil, nihil, nought. 

The padrone took me into a small room almost contained in the thicknessof the wall. There the Signora's dark eyes glared with surprise andagitation, seeing me intrude. She is younger than the Signore, a merevillage tradesman's daughter, and, alas, childless. 

It was quite true, the door stood open. Madame put down the screw-driverand drew herself erect. Her eyes were a flame of excitement. Thisquestion of a door-spring that made the door fly open when it shouldmake it close roused a vivid spark in her soul. It was she who waswrestling with the angel of mechanism. 

She was about forty years old, and flame-like and fierily sad. I thinkshe did not know she was sad. But her heart was eaten by some impotencein her life. 

She subdued her flame of life to the little padrone. He was strange andstatic, scarcely human, ageless, like a monkey. She supported him withher flame, supported his static, ancient, beautiful form, kept itintact. But she did not believe in him. 

Now, the Signora Gemma held her husband together whilst he undid thescrew that fixed the spring. If they had been alone, she would have doneit, pretending to be under his direction. But since I was there, he didit himself; a grey, shaky, highly-bred little gentleman, standing on achair with a long screw-driver, whilst his wife stood behind him, herhands half-raised to catch him if he should fall. Yet he was strangelyabsolute, with a strange, intact force in his breeding. 

They had merely adjusted the strong spring to the shut door, andstretched it slightly in fastening it to the door-jamb, so that it drewtogether the moment the latch was released, and the door flew open. 

We soon made it right. There was a moment of anxiety, the screw wasfixed. And the door swung to. They were delighted. The Signora Gemma, who roused in me an electric kind of melancholy, clasped her handstogether in ecstasy as the door swiftly shut itself. 

'_Ecco!_' she cried, in her vibrating, almost warlike woman's voice:'_Ecco!_'

Her eyes were aflame as they looked at the door. She ran forward to tryit herself. She opened the door expectantly, eagerly. Pouf!--it shutwith a bang. 

'_Ecco!_' she cried, her voice quivering like bronze, overwrought buttriumphant. 

I must try also. I opened the door. Pouf! It shut with a bang. We allexclaimed with joy. 

Then the Signor di Paoli turned to me, with a gracious, bland, formalgrin. He turned his back slightly on the woman, and stood holding hischin, his strange horse-mouth grinning almost pompously at me. It was anaffair of gentlemen. His wife disappeared as if dismissed. Then thepadrone broke into cordial motion. We must drink. 

He would show me the estate. I had already seen the house. We went outby the glass doors on the left, into the domestic courtyard. 

It was lower than the gardens round it, and the sunshine came throughthe trellised arches on to the flagstones, where the grass grew fine andgreen in the cracks, and all was deserted and spacious and still. Therewere one or two orange-tubs in the light. 

Then I heard a noise, and there in the corner, among all the pinkgeraniums and the sunshine, the Signora Gemma sat laughing with a baby. It was a fair, bonny thing of eighteen months. The Signora wasconcentrated upon the child as he sat, stolid and handsome, in hislittle white cap, perched on a bench picking at the pink geraniums. 

She laughed, bent forward her dark face out of the shadow, swift into aglitter of sunshine near the sunny baby, laughing again excitedly, making mother-noises. The child took no notice of her. She caught himswiftly into the shadow, and they were obscured; her dark head wasagainst the baby's wool jacket, she was kissing his neck, avidly, underthe creeper leaves. The pink geraniums still frilled joyously inthe sunshine. 

I had forgotten the padrone. Suddenly I turned to him inquiringly. 

'The Signora's nephew, ' he explained, briefly, curtly, in a small voice. It was as if he were ashamed, or too deeply chagrined. 

The woman had seen us watching, so she came across the sunshine with thechild, laughing, talking to the baby, not coming out of her own world tous, not acknowledging us, except formally. 

The Signor Pietro, queer old horse, began to laugh and neigh at thechild, with strange, rancorous envy. The child twisted its face to cry. The Signora caught it away, dancing back a few yards from herold husband. 

'I am a stranger, ' I said to her across the distance. 'He is afraid of astranger. '

'No, no, ' she cried back, her eyes flaring up. 'It is the man. He alwayscries at the men. '

She advanced again, laughing and roused, with the child in her arms. Herhusband stood as if overcast, obliterated. She and I and the baby, inthe sunshine, laughed a moment. Then I heard the neighing, forced laughof the old man. He would not be left out. He seemed to force himselfforward. He was bitter, acrid with chagrin and obliteration, strugglingas if to assert his own existence. He was nullified. 

The woman also was uncomfortable. I could see she wanted to go away withthe child, to enjoy him alone, with palpitating, pained enjoyment. Itwas her brother's boy. And the old padrone was as if nullified by herecstasy over the baby. He held his chin, gloomy, fretful, unimportant. 

He was annulled. I was startled when I realized it. It was as though hisreality were not attested till he had a child. It was as if his _raisond'être_ had been to have a son. And he had no children. Therefore he hadno _raison d'être_. He was nothing, a shadow that vanishes into nothing. And he was ashamed, consumed by his own nothingness. 

I was startled. This, then, is the secret of Italy's attraction for us, this phallic worship. To the Italian the phallus is the symbol ofindividual creative immortality, to each man his own Godhead. The childis but the evidence of the Godhead. 

And this is why the Italian is attractive, supple, and beautiful, because he worships the Godhead in the flesh. We envy him, we feel paleand insignificant beside him. Yet at the same time we feel superior tohim, as if he were a child and we adult. 

Wherein are we superior? Only because we went beyond the phallus in thesearch of the Godhead, the creative origin. And we found the physicalforces and the secrets of science. 

We have exalted Man far above the man who is in each one of us. Our aimis a perfect humanity, a perfect and equable human consciousness, selfless. And we obtain it in the subjection, reduction, analysis, anddestruction of the Self. So on we go, active in science and mechanics, and social reform. 

But we have exhausted ourselves in the process. We have found greattreasures, and we are now impotent to use them. So we have said: 'Whatgood are these treasures, they are vulgar nothings. ' We have said: 'Letus go back from this adventuring, let us enjoy our own flesh, like theItalian. ' But our habit of life, our very constitution, prevents ourbeing quite like the Italian. The phallus will never serve us as aGodhead, because we do not believe in it: no Northern race does. Therefore, either we set ourselves to serve our children, calling them'the future', or else we turn perverse and destructive, give ourselvesjoy in the destruction of the flesh. 

The children are not the future. The living truth is the future. Timeand people do not make the future. Retrogression is not the future. Fifty million children growing up purposeless, with no purpose save theattainment of their own individual desires, these are not the future, they are only a disintegration of the past. The future is in living, growing truth, in advancing fulfilment. 

But it is no good. Whatever we do, it is within the greater will towardsself-reduction and a perfect society, analysis on the one hand, andmechanical construction on the other. This will dominates us as a whole, and until the whole breaks down, the will must persist. So that now, continuing in the old, splendid will for a perfect selfless humanity, wehave become inhuman and unable to help ourselves, we are but attributesof the great mechanized society we have created on our way toperfection. And this great mechanized society, being selfless, ispitiless. It works on mechanically and destroys us, it is our masterand our God. 

It is past the time to leave off, to cease entirely from what we aredoing, and from what we have been doing for hundreds of years. It ispast the time to cease seeking one Infinite, ignoring, striving toeliminate the other. The Infinite is twofold, the Father and the Son, the Dark and the Light, the Senses and the Mind, the Soul and theSpirit, the self and the not-self, the Eagle and the Dove, the Tiger andthe Lamb. The consummation of man is twofold, in the Self and inSelflessness. By great retrogression back to the source of darkness inme, the Self, deep in the senses, I arrive at the Original, CreativeInfinite. By projection forth from myself, by the elimination of myabsolute sensual self, I arrive at the Ultimate Infinite, Oneness in theSpirit. They are two Infinites, twofold approach to God. And man mustknow both. 

But he must never confuse them. They are eternally separate. The lionshall never lie down with the lamb. The lion eternally shall devour thelamb, the lamb eternally shall be devoured. Man knows the greatconsummation in the flesh, the sensual ecstasy, and that is eternal. Also the spiritual ecstasy of unanimity, that is eternal. But the twoare separate and never to be confused. To neutralize the one with theother is unthinkable, an abomination. Confusion is horror andnothingness. 

The two Infinites, negative and positive, they are always related, butthey are never identical. They are always opposite, but there exists arelation between them. This is the Holy Ghost of the Christian Trinity. And it is this, the relation which is established between the twoInfinites, the two natures of God, which we have transgressed, forgotten, sinned against. The Father is the Father, and the Son is theSon. I may know the Son and deny the Father, or know the Father and denythe Son. But that which I may never deny, and which I have denied, isthe Holy Ghost which relates the dual Infinites into One Whole, whichrelates and keeps distinct the dual natures of God. To say that the twoare one, this is the inadmissible lie. The two are related, by theintervention of the Third, into a Oneness. 

There are two ways, there is not only One. There are two opposite waysto consummation. But that which relates them, like the base of thetriangle, this is the constant, the Absolute, this makes the UltimateWhole. And in the Holy Spirit I know the Two Ways, the Two Infinites, the Two Consummations. And knowing the Two, I admit the Whole. Butexcluding One, I exclude the Whole. And confusing the two, I makenullity nihil. 

'_Mais_, ' said the Signore, starting from his scene of ignominy, wherehis wife played with another man's child, '_mais--voulez-vous vouspromener dans mes petites terres?_'

It came out fluently, he was so much roused in self-defence andself-assertion. 

We walked under the pergola of bony vine-stocks, secure in the sunshinewithin the walls, only the long mountain, parallel with us, looking in. 

I said how I liked the big vine-garden, I asked when it ended. The prideof the padrone came back with a click. He pointed me to the terrace, tothe great shut lemon-houses above. They were all his. But--he shruggedhis Italian shoulders--it was nothing, just a little garden, _voussavez, monsieur_. I protested it was beautiful, that I loved it, andthat it seemed to me _very_ large indeed. He admitted that today, perhaps, it was beautiful. 

'_Perchè--parce que--il fait un tempo--così--très bell'--très beau, ecco!_'

He alighted on the word _beau_ hurriedly, like a bird coming to groundwith a little bounce. 

The terraces of the garden are held up to the sun, the sun falls fullupon them, they are like a vessel slanted up, to catch the superb, heavylight. Within the walls we are remote, perfect, moving in heavy springsunshine, under the bony avenue of vines. The padrone makes littleexclamatory noises that mean nothing, and teaches me the names ofvegetables. The land is rich and black. 

Opposite us, looking down on our security, is the long, arched mountainof snow. We climbed one flight of steps, and we could see the littlevillages on the opposite side of the lake. We climbed again, and couldsee the water rippling. 

We came to a great stone building that I had thought was a storehouse, for open-air storage, because the walls are open halfway up, showing thedarkness inside and the corner pillar very white and square and distinctin front of it. 

Entering carelessly into the dimness, I started, for at my feet was agreat floor of water, clear and green in its obscurity, going downbetween the walls, a reservoir in the gloom. The Signore laughed at mysurprise. It was for irrigating the land, he said. It stank, slightly, with a raw smell; otherwise, I said, what a wonderful bath it wouldmake. The old Signore gave his little neighing laugh at the idea. 

Then we climbed into a great loft of leaves, ruddy brown, stored in agreat bank under the roof, seeming to give off a little red heat, asthey gave off the lovely perfume of the hills. We passed through, andstood at the foot of the lemon-house. The big, blind building rose highin the sunshine before us. 

All summer long, upon the mountain slopes steep by the lake, stands therows of naked pillars rising out of the green foliage like ruins oftemples: white, square pillars of masonry, standing forlorn in theircolonnades and squares, rising up the mountain-sides here and there, asif they remained from some great race that had once worshipped here. Andstill, in the winter, some are seen, standing away in lonely placeswhere the sun streams full, grey rows of pillars rising out of a brokenwall, tier above tier, naked to the sky, forsaken. 

They are the lemon plantations, and the pillars are to support the heavybranches of the trees, but finally to act as scaffolding of the greatwooden houses that stand blind and ugly, covering the lemon trees inthe winter. 

In November, when cold winds came down and snow had fallen on themountains, from out of the storehouses the men were carrying timber, andwe heard the clang of falling planks. Then, as we walked along themilitary road on the mountain-side, we saw below, on the top of thelemon gardens, long, thin poles laid from pillar to pillar, and we heardthe two men talking and singing as they walked across perilously, placing the poles. In their clumsy zoccoli they strode easily across, though they had twenty or thirty feet to fall if they slipped. But themountain-side, rising steeply, seemed near, and above their heads therocks glowed high into the sky, so that the sense of elevation must havebeen taken away. At any rate, they went easily from pillar-summit topillar-summit, with a great cave of space below. Then again was therattle and clang of planks being laid in order, ringing from themountain-side over the blue lake, till a platform of timber, old andbrown, projected from the mountain-side, a floor when seen from above, ahanging roof when seen from below. And we, on the road above, saw themen sitting easily on this flimsy hanging platform, hammering theplanks. And all day long the sound of hammering echoed among the rocksand olive woods, and came, a faint, quick concussion, to the men on theboats far out. When the roofs were on they put in the fronts, blocked inbetween the white pillars withhold, dark wood, in roughly made panels. And here and there, at irregular intervals, was a panel of glass, paneoverlapping pane in the long strip of narrow window. So that now theseenormous, unsightly buildings bulge out on the mountain-sides, rising intwo or three receding tiers, blind, dark, sordid-looking places. 

In the morning I often lie in bed and watch the sunrise. The lake liesdim and milky, the mountains are dark blue at the back, while over themthe sky gushes and glistens with light. At a certain place on themountain ridge the light burns gold, seems to fuse a little groove onthe hill's rim. It fuses and fuses at this point, till of a sudden itcomes, the intense, molten, living light. The mountains melt suddenly, the light steps down, there is a glitter, a spangle, a clutch ofspangles, a great unbearable sun-track flashing across the milky lake, and the light falls on my face. Then, looking aside, I hear the littleslotting noise which tells me they are opening the lemon gardens, a longpanel here and there, a long slot of darkness at irregular intervalsbetween the brown wood and the glass stripes. 

'_Voulez-vous_'--the Signore bows me in with outstretchedhand--'_voulez-vous entrer, monsieur?_'

I went into the lemon-house, where the poor threes seem to mope in thedarkness. It is an immense, dark, cold place. Tall lemon trees, heavywith half-visible fruit, crowd together, and rise in the gloom. Theylook like ghosts in the darkness of the underworld, stately, and as ifin life, but only grand shadows of themselves. And lurking here andthere, I see one of the pillars, But he, too, seems a shadow, not one ofthe dazzling white fellows I knew. Here we are trees, men, pillars, thedark earth, the sad black paths, shut in in this enormous box. It istrue, there are long strips of window and slots of space, so that thefront is striped, and an occasional beam of light fingers the leaves ofan enclosed tree and the sickly round lemons. But it is neverthelessvery gloomy. 

'But it is much colder in here than outside, ' I said. 

'Yes, ' replied the Signore, 'now. But at night--I _think_--'

I almost wished it were night to try. I wanted to imagine the treescosy. They seemed now in the underworld. Between the lemon trees, besidethe path, were little orange trees, and dozens of oranges hanging likehot coals in the twilight. When I warm my hands at them the Signorebreaks me off one twig after another, till I have a bunch of burningoranges among dark leaves, a heavy bouquet. Looking down the Hades ofthe lemon-house, the many ruddy-clustered oranges beside the path remindme of the lights of a village along the lake at night, while the palelemons above are the stars. There is a subtle, exquisite scent of lemonflowers. Then I notice a citron. He hangs heavy and bloated upon sosmall a tree, that he seems a dark green enormity. There is a great hostof lemons overhead, half-visible, a swarm of ruddy oranges by the paths, and here and there a fat citron. It is almost like being under the sea. 

At the corners of the path were round little patches of ash and stumpsof charred wood, where fires had been kindled inside the house on coldnights. For during the second and third weeks in January the snow camedown so low on the mountains that, after climbing for an hour, I foundmyself in a snow lane, and saw olive orchards on lawns of snow. 

The padrone says that all lemons and sweet oranges are grafted on abitter-orange stock. The plants raised from seed, lemon and sweetorange, fell prey to disease, so the cultivators found it safe only toraise the native bitter orange, and then graft upon it. 

And the maestra--she is the schoolmistress, who wears black gloves whileshe teaches us Italian--says that the lemon was brought by St Francis ofAssisi, who came to the Garda here and founded a church and a monastery. Certainly the church of San Francesco is very old and dilapidated, andits cloisters have some beautiful and original carvings of leaves andfruit upon the pillars, which seem to connect San Francesco with thelemon. I imagine him wandering here with a lemon in his pocket. Perhapshe made lemonade in the hot summer. But Bacchus had been before him inthe drink trade. 

Looking at his lemons, the Signore sighed. I think he hates them. Theyare leaving him in the lurch. They are sold retail at a halfpenny eachall the year round. 'But that is as dear, or dearer, than in England, ' Isay. 'Ah, but, ' says the maestra, 'that is because your lemons areoutdoor fruit from Sicily. _Però_--one of our lemons is as good as _two_from elsewhere. '

It is true these lemons have an exquisite fragrance and perfume, butwhether their force as lemons is double that of an ordinary fruit is aquestion. Oranges are sold at fourpence halfpenny the kilo--it comesabout five for twopence, small ones. The citrons are sold also by weightin Salò for the making of that liqueur known as 'Cedro'. One citronfetches sometimes a shilling or more, but then the demand is necessarilysmall. So that it is evident, from these figures, the Lago di Gardacannot afford to grow its lemons much longer. The gardens are alreadymany of them in ruins, and still more 'Da Vendere'. 

We went out of the shadow of the lemon-house on to the roof of thesection below us. When we came to the brink of the roof I sat down. Thepadrone stood behind me, a shabby, shaky little figure on his roof inthe sky, a little figure of dilapidation, dilapidated as thelemon-houses themselves. 

We were always level with the mountain-snow opposite. A film of pureblue was on the hills to the right and the left. There had been a wind, but it was still now. The water breathed an iridescent dust on the farshore, where the villages were groups of specks. 

On the low level of the world, on the lake, an orange-sailed boat leanedslim to the dark-blue water, which had flecks of foam. A woman wentdown-hill quickly, with two goats and a sheep. Among the olives a manwas whistling. 

'_Voyez_, ' said the padrone, with distant, perfect melancholy. 'Therewas once a lemon garden also there--you see the short pillars, cut offto make a pergola for the vine. Once there were twice as many lemons asnow. Now we must have vine instead. From that piece of land I had twohundred lire a year, in lemons. From the vine I have only eighty. '

'But wine is a valuable crop, ' I said. 

'Ah--_così-così_! For a man who grows much. For me--_poco, poco--peu_. '

Suddenly his face broke into a smile of profound melancholy, almost agrin, like a gargoyle. It was the real Italian melancholy, verydeep, static. 

'_Vous voyez, monsieur_--the lemon, it is all the year, all the year. But the vine--one crop--?'

He lifts his shoulders and spreads his hands with that gesture offinality and fatality, while his face takes the blank, ageless look ofmisery, like a monkey's. There is no hope. There is the present. Eitherthat is enough, the present, or there is nothing. 

I sat and looked at the lake. It was beautiful as paradise, as the firstcreation. On the shores were the ruined lemon-pillars standing out inmelancholy, the clumsy, enclosed lemon-houses seemed ramshackle, bulgingamong vine stocks and olive trees. The villages, too, clustered upontheir churches, seemed to belong to the past. They seemed to belingering in bygone centuries. 

'But it is very beautiful, ' I protested. 'In England--'

'Ah, in England, ' exclaimed the padrone, the same ageless, monkey-likegrin of fatality, tempered by cunning, coming on his face, 'in Englandyou have the wealth--_les richesses_--you have the mineral coal and themachines, _vous savez_. Here we have the sun--'

He lifted his withered hand to the sky, to the wonderful source of thatblue day, and he smiled, in histrionic triumph. But his triumph was onlyhistrionic. The machines were more to his soul than the sun. He did notknow these mechanisms, their great, human-contrived, inhuman power, andhe wanted to know them. As for the sun, that is common property, and noman is distinguished by it. He wanted machines, machine production, money, and human power. He wanted to know the joy of man who has got theearth in his grip, bound it up with railways, burrowed it with ironfingers, subdued it. He wanted this last triumph of the ego, this lastreduction. He wanted to go where the English have gone, beyond the Self, into the great inhuman Not Self, to create the great unliving creators, the machines, out of the active forces of nature that existedbefore flesh. 

But he is too old. It remains for the young Italian to embrace hismistress, the machine. 

I sat on the roof of the lemon-house, with the lake below and the snowymountain opposite, and looked at the ruins on the old, olive-fumingshores, at all the peace of the ancient world still covered in sunshine, and the past seemed to me so lovely that one must look towards it, backwards, only backwards, where there is peace and beauty and no moredissonance. 

I thought of England, the great mass of London, and the black, fuming, laborious Midlands and north-country. It seemed horrible. And yet, itwas better than the padrone, this old, monkey-like cunning of fatality. It is better to go forward into error than to stay fixed inextricablyin the past. 

Yet what should become of the world? There was London and the industrialcounties spreading like a blackness over all the world, horrible, in theend destructive. And the Garda was so lovely under the sky of sunshine, it was intolerable. For away, beyond, beyond all the snowy Alps, withthe iridescence of eternal ice above them, was this England, black andfoul and dry, with her soul worn down, almost worn away. And England wasconquering the world with her machines and her horrible destruction ofnatural life. She was conquering the whole world. 

And yet, was she not herself finished in this work? She had had enough. She had conquered the natural life to the end: she was replete with theconquest of the outer world, satisfied with the destruction of the Self. She would cease, she would turn round; or else expire. 

If she still lived, she would begin to build her knowledge into a greatstructure of truth. There it lay, vast masses of rough-hewn knowledge, vast masses of machines and appliances, vast masses of ideas andmethods, and nothing done with it, only teeming swarms of disintegratedhuman beings seething and perishing rapidly away amongst it, till itseems as if a world will be left covered with huge ruins, and scored bystrange devices of industry, and quite dead, the people disappeared, swallowed up in the last efforts towards a perfect, selfless society. 

_3_

THE THEATRE

During carnival a company is playing in the theatre. On Christmas Daythe padrone came in with the key of his box, and would we care to seethe drama? The theatre was small, a mere nothing, in fact; a mere affairof peasants, you understand; and the Signor Di Paoli spread his handsand put his head on one side, parrot-wise; but we might find a littlediversion--_un peu de divertiment_. With this he handed me the key. 

I made suitable acknowledgements, and was really impressed. To be handedthe key of a box at the theatre, so simply and pleasantly, in the largesitting-room looking over the grey lake of Christmas Day; it seemed tome a very graceful event. The key had a chain and a little shield ofbronze, on which was beaten out a large figure 8. 

So the next day we went to see _I Spettri_, expecting some good, crudemelodrama. The theatre is an old church. Since that triumph of the deafand dumb, the cinematograph, has come to give us the nervous excitementof speed--grimace agitation, and speed, as of flying atoms, chaos--manyan old church in Italy has taken a new lease of life. 

This cast-off church made a good theatre. I realized how cleverly it hadbeen constructed for the dramatic presentation of religious ceremonies. The east end is round, the walls are windowless, sound is welldistributed. Now everything is theatrical, except the stone floor andtwo pillars at the back of the auditorium, and the slightlyecclesiastical seats below. 

There are two tiers of little boxes in the theatre, some forty in all, with fringe and red velvet, and lined with dark red paper, quite likereal boxes in a real theatre. And the padrone's is one of the best. Itjust holds three people. 

We paid our threepence entrance fee in the stone hall and went upstairs. I opened the door of Number 8, and we were shut in our little cabin, looking down on the world. Then I found the barber, Luigi, bowingprofusely in a box opposite. It was necessary to make bows all round:ah, the chemist, on the upper tier, near the barber; how-do-you-do tothe padrona of the hotel, who is our good friend, and who sits, wearinga little beaver shoulder-cape, a few boxes off; very cold salutation tothe stout village magistrate with the long brown beard, who leansforward in the box facing the stage, while a grouping of faces look outfrom behind him; a warm smile to the family of the Signora Gemma, acrossnext to the stage. Then we are settled. 

I cannot tell why I hate the village magistrate. He looks like a familyportrait by a Flemish artist, he himself weighing down the front of thepicture with his portliness and his long brown beard, whilst the facesof his family are arranged in two groups for the background. I think heis angry at our intrusion. He is very republican and self-important. Butwe eclipse him easily, with the aid of a large black velvet hat, andblack furs, and our Sunday clothes. 

Downstairs the villagers are crowding, drifting like a heavy current. The women are seated, by church instinct, all together on the left, withperhaps an odd man at the end of a row, beside his wife. On the right, sprawling in the benches, are several groups of bersaglieri, in greyuniforms and slanting cock's-feather hats; then peasants, fishermen, andan odd couple or so of brazen girls taking their places on themen's side. 

At the back, lounging against the pillars or standing very dark andsombre, are the more reckless spirits of the village. Their black felthats are pulled down, their cloaks are thrown over their mouths, theystand very dark and isolated in their moments of stillness, they shoutand wave to each other when anything occurs. 

The men are clean, their clothes are all clean washed. The rags of thepoorest porter are always well washed. But it is Sunday tomorrow, andthey are shaved only on a Sunday. So that they have a week's blackgrowth on their chins. But they have dark, soft eyes, unconscious andvulnerable. They move and balance with loose, heedless motion upon theirclattering zoccoli, they lounge with wonderful ease against the wall atthe back, or against the two pillars, unconscious of the patches ontheir clothes or of their bare throats, that are knotted perhaps with ascarlet rag. Loose and abandoned, they lounge and talk, or they watchwith wistful absorption the play that is going on. 

They are strangely isolated in their own atmosphere, and as if revealed. It is as if their vulnerable being was exposed and they have not the witto cover it. There is a pathos of physical sensibility and mentalinadequacy. Their mind is not sufficiently alert to run with theirquick, warm senses. 

The men keep together, as if to support each other, the women also aretogether; in a hard, strong herd. It is as if the power, the hardness, the triumph, even in this Italian village, were with the women in theirrelentless, vindictive unity. 

That which drives men and women together, the indomitable necessity, islike a bondage upon the people. They submit as under compulsion, underconstraint. They come together mostly in anger and in violence ofdestructive passion. There is no comradeship between men and women, nonewhatsoever, but rather a condition of battle, reserve, hostility. 

On Sundays the uncomfortable, excited, unwilling youth walks for an hourwith his sweetheart, at a little distance from her, on the publichighway in the afternoon. This is a concession to the necessity formarriage. There is no real courting, no happiness of being together, only the roused excitement which is based on a fundamental hostility. There is very little flirting, and what there is is of the subtle, cruelkind, like a sex duel. On the whole, the men and women avoid each other, almost shun each other. Husband and wife are brought together in achild, which they both worship. But in each of them there is only thegreat reverence for the infant, and the reverence for fatherhood ormotherhood, as the case may be; there is no spiritual love. 

In marriage, husband and wife wage the subtle, satisfying war of sexupon each other. It gives a profound satisfaction, a profound intimacy. But it destroys all joy, all unanimity in action. 

On Sunday afternoons the uncomfortable youth walks by the side of hismaiden for an hour in the public highway. Then he escapes; as from abondage he goes back to his men companions. On Sunday afternoons andevenings the married woman, accompanied by a friend or by a child--shedare not go alone, afraid of the strange, terrible sex-war between herand the drunken man--is seen leading home the wine-drunken, liberatedhusband. Sometimes she is beaten when she gets home. It is part of theprocess. But there is no synthetic love between men and women, there isonly passion, and passion is fundamental hatred, the act of love isa fight. 

The child, the outcome, is divine. Here the union, the oneness, ismanifest. Though spirit strove with spirit, in mortal conflict, duringthe sex-passion, yet the flesh united with flesh in oneness. The phallusis still divine. But the spirit, the mind of man, this hasbecome nothing. 

So the women triumph. They sit down below in the theatre, theirperfectly dressed hair gleaming, their backs very straight, their headscarried tensely. They are not very noticeable. They seem held inreserve. They are just as tense and stiff as the men are slack andabandoned. Some strange will holds the women taut. They seem likeweapons, dangerous. There is nothing charming nor winning about them; atthe best a full, prolific maternity, at the worst a yellow poisonousbitterness of the flesh that is like a narcotic. But they are too strongfor the men. The male spirit, which would subdue the immediate flesh tosome conscious or social purpose, is overthrown. The woman in hermaternity is the law-giver, the supreme authority. The authority of theman, in work, in public affairs, is something trivial in comparison. Thepathetic ignominy of the village male is complete on Sunday afternoon, on his great day of liberation, when he is accompanied home, drunk butsinister, by the erect, unswerving, slightly cowed woman. His drunkenterrorizing is only pitiable, she is so obviously the moreconstant power. 

And this is why the men must go away to America. It is not the money. Itis the profound desire to rehabilitate themselves, to recover somedignity as men, as producers, as workers, as creators from the spirit, not only from the flesh. It is a profound desire to get away from womenaltogether, the terrible subjugation to sex, the phallic worship. 

The company of actors in the little theatre was from a small town awayon the plain, beyond Brescia. The curtain rose, everybody was still, with that profound, naïve attention which children give. And after a fewminutes I realized that _I Spettri_ was Ibsen's _Ghosts_. The peasantsand fishermen of the Garda, even the rows of ungovernable children, satabsorbed in watching as the Norwegian drama unfolded itself. 

The actors are peasants. The leader is the son of a peasant proprietor. He is qualified as a chemist, but is unsettled, vagrant, prefersplay-acting. The Signer Pietro di Paoli shrugs his shoulders andapologizes for their vulgar accent. It is all the same to me. I amtrying to get myself to rights with the play, which I have just latelyseen in Munich, perfectly produced and detestable. 

It was such a change from the hard, ethical, slightly mechanizedcharacters in the German play, which was as perfect an interpretation asI can imagine, to the rather pathetic notion of the Italian peasants, that I had to wait to adjust myself. 

The mother was a pleasant, comfortable woman harassed by something, shedid not quite know what. The pastor was a ginger-haired caricatureimitated from the northern stage, quite a lay figure. The peasants neverlaughed, they watched solemnly and absorbedly like children. The servantwas just a slim, pert, forward hussy, much too flagrant. And then theson, the actor-manager: he was a dark, ruddy man, broad and thick-set, evidently of peasant origin, but with some education now; he was theimportant figure, the play was his. 

And he was strangely disturbing. Dark, ruddy, and powerful, he could notbe the blighted son of 'Ghosts', the hectic, unsound, northern issue ofa diseased father. His flashy Italian passion for his half-sister wasreal enough to make one uncomfortable: something he wanted and wouldhave in spite of his own soul, something which fundamentally he didnot want. 

It was this contradiction within the man that made the play sointeresting. A robust, vigorous man of thirty-eight, flaunting andflorid as a rather successful Italian can be, there was yet a secretsickness which oppressed him. But it was no taint in the blood, it wasrather a kind of debility in the soul. That which he wanted and wouldhave, the sensual excitement, in his soul he did not want it, no, not atall. And yet he must act from his physical desires, his physical will. 

His true being, his real self, was impotent. In his soul he wasdependent, forlorn. He was childish and dependent on the mother. To hearhim say, '_Grazia, mamma!_' would have tormented the mother-soul in anywoman living. Such a child crying in the night! And for what?

For he was hot-blooded, healthy, almost in his prime, and free as a mancan be in his circumstances. He had his own way, he admitted nothwarting. He governed his circumstances pretty much, coming to ourvillage with his little company, playing the plays he chose himself. Andyet, that which he would have he did not vitally want, it was only asort of inflamed obstinacy that made him so insistent, in the masculineway. He was not going to be governed by women, he was not going to bedictated to in the least by any one. And this because he was beaten byhis own flesh. 

His real man's soul, the soul that goes forth and builds up a new worldout of the void, was ineffectual. It could only revert to the senses. His divinity was the phallic divinity. The other male divinity, which isthe spirit that fulfils in the world the new germ of an idea, this wasdenied and obscured in him, unused. And it was this spirit which criedout helplessly in him through the insistent, inflammable flesh. Eventhis play-acting was a form of physical gratification for him, it had init neither real mind nor spirit. 

It was so different from Ibsen, and so much more moving. Ibsen isexciting, nervously sensational. But this was really moving, a realcrying in the night. One loved the Italian nation, and wanted to help itwith all one's soul. But when one sees the perfect Ibsen, how one hatesthe Norwegian and Swedish nations! They are detestable. 

They seem to be fingering with the mind the secret places and sources ofthe blood, impertinent, irreverent, nasty. There is a certainintolerable nastiness about the real Ibsen: the same thing is inStrindberg and in most of the Norwegian and Swedish writings. It is withthem a sort of phallic worship also, but now the worship is mental andperverted: the phallus is the real fetish, but it is the source ofuncleanliness and corruption and death, it is the Moloch, worshipped inobscenity. 

Which is unbearable. The phallus is a symbol of creative divinity. Butit represents only part of creative divinity. The Italian has made itrepresent the whole. Which is now his misery, for he has to destroy hissymbol in himself. 

Which is why the Italian men have the enthusiasm for war, unashamed. Partly it is the true phallic worship, for the phallic principle is toabsorb and dominate all life. But also it is a desire to exposethemselves to death, to know death, that death may destroy in them thistoo strong dominion of the blood, may once more liberate the spirit ofoutgoing, of uniting, of making order out of chaos, in the outer world, as the flesh makes a new order from chaos in begetting a new life, setthem free to know and serve a greater idea. 

The peasants below sat and listened intently, like children who hear anddo not understand, yet who are spellbound. The children themselves sitspellbound on the benches till the play is over. They do not fidget orlose interest. They watch with wide, absorbed eyes at the mystery, heldin thrall by the sound of emotion. 

But the villagers do not really care for Ibsen. They let it go. On thefeast of Epiphany, as a special treat, was given a poetic drama byD'Annunzio, _La Fiaccola sotto il Moggio_--_The Light under the Bushel_. 

It is a foolish romantic play of no real significance. There are severalmurders and a good deal of artificial horror. But it is all a very niceand romantic piece of make-believe, like a charade. 

So the audience loved it. After the performance of _Ghosts_ I saw thebarber, and he had the curious grey clayey look of an Italian who iscold and depressed. The sterile cold inertia, which the so-calledpassionate nations know so well, had settled on him, and he wentobliterating himself in the street, as if he were cold, dead. 

But after the D'Annunzio play he was like a man who has drunk sweet wineand is warm. 

'_Ah, bellissimo, bellissimo_!' he said, in tones of intoxicatedreverence, when he saw me. 

'Better than _I Spettri_?' I said. 

He half-raised his hands, as if to imply the fatuity of the question. 

'Ah, but--' he said, 'it was D'Annunzio. The other. .. . '

'That was Ibsen--a great Norwegian, ' I said, 'famous all over theworld. '

'But you know--D'Annunzio is a poet--oh, beautiful, beautiful!' Therewas no going beyond this '_bello--bellissimo_'. 

It was the language which did it. It was the Italian passion forrhetoric, for the speech which appeals to the senses and makes no demandon the mind. When an Englishman listens to a speech he wants at least toimagine that he understands thoroughly and impersonally what is meant. But an Italian only cares about the emotion. It is the movement, thephysical effect of the language upon the blood which gives him supremesatisfaction. His mind is scarcely engaged at all. He is like a child, hearing and feeling without understanding. It is the sensuousgratification he asks for. Which is why D'Annunzio is a god in Italy. Hecan control the current of the blood with his words, and although muchof what he says is bosh, yet his hearer is satisfied, fulfilled. 

Carnival ends on the 5th of February, so each Thursday there is a Seratad' Onore of one of the actors. The first, and the only one for whichprices were raised--to a fourpence entrance fee instead ofthreepence--was for the leading lady. The play was _The Wife of theDoctor_, a modern piece, sufficiently uninteresting; the farce thatfollowed made me laugh. 

Since it was her Evening of Honour, Adelaida was the person to see. Sheis very popular, though she is no longer young. In fact, she is themother of the young pert person of _Ghosts_. 

Nevertheless, Adelaida, stout and blonde and soft and pathetic, is thereal heroine of the theatre, the prima. She is very good at sobbing; andafterwards the men exclaim involuntarily, out of their strong emotion, '_bella, bella_!' The women say nothing. They sit stiffly anddangerously as ever. But, no doubt, they quite agree this is the truepicture of ill-used, tear-stained woman, the bearer of many wrongs. Therefore they take unto themselves the homage of the men's '_bella, bella_!' that follows the sobs: it is due recognition of their hardwrongs: 'the woman pays. ' Nevertheless, they despise in their souls theplump, soft Adelaida. 

Dear Adelaida, she is irreproachable. In every age, in every clime, sheis dear, at any rate to the masculine soul, this soft, tear-blenched, blonde, ill-used thing. She must be ill-used and unfortunate. DearGretchen, dear Desdemona, dear Iphigenia, dear Dame aux Camélias, dearLucy of Lammermoor, dear Mary Magdalene, dear, pathetic, unfortunatesoul, in all ages and lands, how we love you. In the theatre sheblossoms forth, she is the lily of the stage. Young and inexperienced asI am, I have broken my heart over her several times. I could write asonnet-sequence to her, yes, the fair, pale, tear-stained thing, white-robed, with her hair down her back; I could call her by a hundrednames, in a hundred languages, Melisande, Elizabeth, Juliet, Butterfly, Phèdre, Minnehaha, etc. Each new time I hear her voice, with its faintclang of tears, my heart grows big and hot, and my bones melt. I detesther, but it is no good. My heart begins to swell like a bud under theplangent rain. 

The last time I saw her was here, on the Garda, at Salò. She was thechalked, thin-armed daughter of Rigoletto. I detested her, her voice hada chalky squeak in it. And yet, by the end, my heart was overripe in mybreast, ready to burst with loving affection. I was ready to walk on tothe stage, to wipe out the odious, miscreant lover, and to offer her allmyself, saying, 'I can see it is real _love_ you want, and you shallhave it: _I_ will give it to you. '

Of course I know the secret of the Gretchen magic; it is all in the'Save me, Mr Hercules!' phrase. Her shyness, her timidity, hertrustfulness, her tears foster my own strength and grandeur. I am thepositive half of the universe. But so I am, if it comes to that, just aspositive as the other half. 

Adelaida is plump, and her voice has just that moist, plangent strengthwhich gives one a real voluptuous thrill. The moment she comes on thestage and looks round--a bit scared--she is _she_, Electra, Isolde, Sieglinde, Marguèrite. She wears a dress of black voile, like the ladywho weeps at the trial in the police-court. This is her modern uniform. Her antique garment is of trailing white, with a blonde pigtail and aflower. Realistically, it is black voile and a handkerchief. 

Adelaida always has a handkerchief. And still I cannot resist it. I say, 'There's the hanky!' Nevertheless, in two minutes it has worked its waywith me. She squeezes it in her poor, plump hand as the tears begin torise; Fate, or man, is inexorable, so cruel. There is a sob, a cry; shepresses the fist and the hanky to her eyes, one eye, then the other. Sheweeps real tears, tears shaken from the depths of her soft, vulnerable, victimized female self. I cannot stand it. There I sit in the padrone'slittle red box and stifle my emotion, whilst I repeat in my heart: 'Whata shame, child, what a shame!' She is twice my age, but what is age insuch circumstances? 'Your poor little hanky, it's sopping. There, then, don't cry. It'll be all right. _I'll_ see you're all right. _All_ menare not beasts, you know. ' So I cover her protectively in my arms, andsoon I shall be kissing her, for comfort, in the heat and prowess of mycompassion, kissing her soft, plump cheek and neck closely, bringing mycomfort nearer and nearer. 

It is a pleasant and exciting role for me to play. Robert Burns did thepart to perfection:

 O wert thou in the cauld blast On yonder lea, on yonder lea. 

How many times does one recite that to all the Ophelias and Gretchens inthe world:

 Thy bield should be my bosom. 

How one admires one's bosom in that capacity! Looking down at one'sshirt-front, one is filled with strength and pride. 

Why are the women so bad at playing this part in real life, thisOphelia-Gretchen role? Why are they so unwilling to go mad and die forour sakes? They do it regularly on the stage. 

But perhaps, after all, we write the plays. What a villain I am, what ablack-browed, passionate, ruthless, masculine villain I am to theleading lady on the stage; and, on the other hand, dear heart, what ahero, what a fount of chivalrous generosity and faith! I am _anything_but a dull and law-abiding citizen. I am a Galahad, full of purity andspirituality, I am the Lancelot of valour and lust; I fold my hands, orI cock my hat in one side, as the case may be: I am _myself_. Only, I amnot a respectable citizen, not that, in this hour of my glory andmy escape. 

Dear Heaven, how Adelaida wept, her voice plashing like violin music, atmy ruthless, masculine cruelty. Dear heart, how she sighed to rest on mysheltering bosom! And how I enjoyed my dual nature! How Iadmired myself!

Adelaida chose _La Moglie del Dottore_ for her Evening of Honour. Duringthe following week came a little storm of coloured bills: 'Great Eveningof Honour of Enrico Persevalli. '

This is the leader, the actor-manager. What should he choose for hisgreat occasion, this broad, thick-set, ruddy descendant of the peasantproprietors of the plain? No one knew. The title of the play wasnot revealed. 

So we were staying at home, it was cold and wet. But the maestra cameinflammably on that Thursday evening, and were we not going to thetheatre, to see _Amleto_?

Poor maestra, she is yellow and bitter-skinned, near fifty, but her darkeyes are still corrosively inflammable. She was engaged to a lieutenantin the cavalry, who got drowned when she was twenty-one. Since then shehas hung on the tree unripe, growing yellow and bitter-skinned, neverdeveloping. 

'_Amleto!_' I say. '_Non lo conosco. _'

A certain fear comes into her eyes. She is schoolmistress, and has amortal dread of being wrong. 

'_Si_, ' she cries, wavering, appealing, '_una dramma inglese_. '

'English!' I repeated. 

'Yes, an English drama. '

'How do you write it?'

Anxiously, she gets a pencil from her reticule, and, with black-glovedscrupulousness, writes _Amleto_. 

'_Hamlet_!' I exclaim wonderingly. 

'_Ecco, Amleto!_' cries the maestra, her eyes aflame with thankfuljustification. 

Then I knew that Signore Enrico Persevalli was looking to me for anaudience. His Evening of Honour would be a bitter occasion to him if theEnglish were not there to see his performance. 

I hurried to get ready, I ran through the rain. I knew he would take itbadly that it rained on his Evening of Honour. He counted himself a manwho had fate against him. 

'_Sono un disgraziato, io. _'

I was late. The First Act was nearly over. The play was not yet alive, neither in the bosoms of the actors nor in the audience. I closed thedoor of the box softly, and came forward. The rolling Italian eyes ofHamlet glanced up at me. There came a new impulse over the Courtof Denmark. 

Enrico looked a sad fool in his melancholy black. The doublet sat close, making him stout and vulgar, the knee-breeches seemed to exaggerate thecommonness of his thick, rather short, strutting legs. And he carried along black rag, as a cloak, for histrionic purposes. And he had on hisface a portentous grimace of melancholy and philosophic importance. Hiswas the caricature of Hamlet's melancholy self-absorption. 

I stooped to arrange my footstool and compose my countenance. I wastrying not to grin. For the first time, attired in philosophicmelancholy of black silk, Enrico looked a boor and a fool. Hisclose-cropped, rather animal head was common above the effeminatedoublet, his sturdy, ordinary figure looked absurd in amelancholic droop. 

All the actors alike were out of their element. Their Majesties ofDenmark were touching. The Queen, burly little peasant woman, was ill atease in her pink satin. Enrico had had no mercy. He knew she loved to bethe scolding servant or housekeeper, with her head tied up in ahandkerchief, shrill and vulgar. Yet here she was pranked out in anexpanse of satin, la Regina. Regina, indeed!

She obediently did her best to be important. Indeed, she rather fanciedherself; she looked sideways at the audience, self-consciously, quiteready to be accepted as an imposing and noble person, if they wouldesteem her such. Her voice sounded hoarse and common, but whether it wasthe pink satin in contrast, or a cold, I do not know. She was almostchildishly afraid to move. Before she began a speech she looked down andkicked her skirt viciously, so that she was sure it was under control. Then she let go. She was a burly, downright little body of sixty, onerather expected her to box Hamlet on the ears. 

Only she liked being a queen when she sat on the throne. There sheperched with great satisfaction, her train splendidly displayed down thesteps. She was as proud as a child, and she looked like Queen Victoriaof the Jubilee period. 

The King, her noble consort, also had new honours thrust upon him, aswell as new garments. His body was real enough but it had nothing at allto do with his clothes. They established a separate identity bythemselves. But wherever he went, they went with him, to the confusionof everybody. 

He was a thin, rather frail-looking peasant, pathetic, and very gentle. There was something pure and fine about him, he was so exceedinglygentle and by natural breeding courteous. But he did not feel kingly, heacted the part with beautiful, simple resignation. 

Enrico Persevalli had overshot himself in every direction, but worst ofall in his own. He had become a hulking fellow, crawling about with hishead ducked between his shoulders, pecking and poking, creeping aboutafter other people, sniffing at them, setting traps for them, absorbedby his own self-important self-consciousness. His legs, in their blackknee-breeches, had a crawling, slinking look; he always carried theblack rag of a cloak, something for him to twist about as he twisted inhis own soul, overwhelmed by a sort of inverted perversity. 

I had always felt an aversion from Hamlet: a creeping, unclean thing heseems, on the stage, whether he is Forbes Robertson or anybody else. Hisnasty poking and sniffing at his mother, his setting traps for the King, his conceited perversion with Ophelia make him always intolerable. Thecharacter is repulsive in its conception, based on self-dislike and aspirit of disintegration. 

There is, I think, this strain of cold dislike, or self-dislike, throughmuch of the Renaissance art, and through all the later Shakespeare. InShakespeare it is a kind of corruption in the flesh and a consciousrevolt from this. A sense of corruption in the flesh makes Hamletfrenzied, for he will never admit that it is his own flesh. Leonardo daVinci is the same, but Leonardo loves the corruption maliciously. Michelangelo rejects any feeling of corruption, he stands by the flesh, the flesh only. It is the corresponding reaction, but in the oppositedirection. But that is all four hundred years ago. Enrico Persevalli hasjust reached the position. He _is_ Hamlet, and evidently he has greatsatisfaction in the part. He is the modern Italian, suspicious, isolated, self-nauseated, labouring in a sense of physical corruption. But he will not admit it is in himself. He creeps about in self-conceit, transforming his own self-loathing. With what satisfaction did he revealcorruption--corruption in his neighbours he gloated in--letting hismother know he had discovered her incest, her uncleanness, gloated intorturing the incestuous King. Of all the unclean ones, Hamlet was theuncleanest. But he accused only the others. 

Except in the 'great' speeches, and there Enrico was betrayed, Hamletsuffered the extremity of physical self-loathing, loathing of his ownflesh. The play is the statement of the most significant philosophicposition of the Renaissance. Hamlet is far more even than Orestes, hisprototype, a mental creature, anti-physical, anti-sensual. The wholedrama is the tragedy of the convulsed reaction of the mind from theflesh, of the spirit from the self, the reaction from the greataristocratic to the great democratic principle. 

An ordinary instinctive man, in Hamlet's position, would either have setabout murdering his uncle, by reflex action, or else would have goneright away. There would have been no need for Hamlet to murder hismother. It would have been sufficient blood-vengeance if he had killedhis uncle. But that is the statement according to the aristocraticprinciple. 

Orestes was in the same position, but the same position two thousandyears earlier, with two thousand years of experience wanting. So thatthe question was not so intricate in him as in Hamlet, he was not nearlyso conscious. The whole Greek life was based on the idea of thesupremacy of the self, and the self was always male. Orestes was hisfather's child, he would be the same whatever mother he had. The motherwas but the vehicle, the soil in which the paternal seed was planted. When Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon, it was as if a common individualmurdered God, to the Greek. 

But Agamemnon, King and Lord, was not infallible. He was fallible. Hehad sacrificed Iphigenia for the sake of glory in war, for thefulfilment of the superb idea of self, but on the other hand he had madecruel dissension for the sake of the concubines captured in war. Thepaternal flesh was fallible, ungodlike. It lusted after meaner pursuitsthan glory, war, and slaying, it was not faithful to the highest idea ofthe self. Orestes was driven mad by the furies of his mother, because ofthe justice that they represented. Nevertheless he was in the endexculpated. The third play of the trilogy is almost foolish, with itsprating gods. But it means that, according to the Greek conviction, Orestes was right and Clytemnestra entirely wrong. But for all that, theinfallible King, the infallible male Self, is dead in Orestes, killed bythe furies of Clytemnestra. He gains his peace of mind after therevulsion from his own physical fallibility, but he will never be anunquestioned lord, as Agamemnon was. Orestes is left at peace, neutralized. He is the beginning of non-aristocratic Christianity. 

Hamlet's father, the King, is, like Agamemnon, a warrior-king. But, unlike Agamemnon, he is blameless with regard to Gertrude. Yet Gertrude, like Clytemnestra, is the potential murderer of her husband, as LadyMacbeth is murderess, as the daughters of Lear. The women murder thesupreme male, the ideal Self, the King and Father. 

This is the tragic position Shakespeare must dwell upon. The womanrejects, repudiates the ideal Self which the male represents to her. Thesupreme representative, King and Father, is murdered by the Wife and theDaughters. 

What is the reason? Hamlet goes mad in a revulsion of rage and nausea. Yet the women-murderers only represent some ultimate judgement in hisown soul. At the bottom of his own soul Hamlet has decided that the Selfin its supremacy, Father and King, must die. It is a suicidal decisionfor his involuntary soul to have arrived at. Yet it is inevitable. Thegreat religious, philosophic tide, which has been swelling all throughthe Middle Ages, had brought him there. 

The question, to be or not to be, which Hamlet puts himself, does notmean, to live or not to live. It is not the simple human being who putshimself the question, it is the supreme I, King and Father. To be or notto be King, Father, in the Self supreme? And the decision is, not to be. 

It is the inevitable philosophic conclusion of all the Renaissance. Thedeepest impulse in man, the religious impulse, is the desire to beimmortal, or infinite, consummated. And this impulse is satisfied infulfilment of an idea, a steady progression. In this progression man issatisfied, he seems to have reached his goal, this infinity, thisimmortality, this eternal being, with every step nearer which he takes. 

And so, according to his idea of fulfilment, man establishes the wholeorder of life. If my fulfilment is the fulfilment and establishment ofthe unknown divine Self which I am, then I shall proceed in therealizing of the greatest idea of the self, the highest conception ofthe I, my order of life will be kingly, imperial, aristocratic. The bodypolitic also will culminate in this divinity of the flesh, this bodyimbued with glory, invested with divine power and might, the King, theEmperor. In the body politic also I shall desire a king, an emperor, atyrant, glorious, mighty, in whom I see myself consummated andfulfilled. This is inevitable!

But during the Middle Ages, struggling within this pagan, originaltransport, the transport of the Ego, was a small dissatisfaction, asmall contrary desire. Amid the pomp of kings and popes was the ChildJesus and the Madonna. Jesus the King gradually dwindled down. There wasJesus the Child, helpless, at the mercy of all the world. And there wasJesus crucified. 

The old transport, the old fulfilment of the Ego, the Davidian ecstasy, the assuming of all power and glory unto the self, the becoming infinitethrough the absorption of all into the Ego, this gradually becameunsatisfactory. This was not the infinite, this was not immortality. This was eternal death, this was damnation. 

The monk rose up with his opposite ecstasy, the Christian ecstasy. Therewas a death to die: the flesh, the self, must die, so that the spiritshould rise again immortal, eternal, infinite. I am dead unto myself, but I live in the Infinite. The finite Me is no more, only the Infinite, the Eternal, is. 

At the Renaissance this great half-truth overcame the other greathalf-truth. The Christian Infinite, reached by a process of abnegation, a process of being absorbed, dissolved, diffused into the greatNot-Self, supplanted the old pagan Infinite, wherein the self like aroot threw out branches and radicles which embraced the whole universe, became the Whole. 

There is only one Infinite, the world now cried, there is the greatChristian Infinite of renunciation and consummation in the not-self. Theother, that old pride, is damnation. The sin of sins is Pride, it is theway to total damnation. Whereas the pagans based their life on pride. 

And according to this new Infinite, reached through renunciation anddissolving into the Others, the Neighbour, man must build up his actualform of life. With Savonarola and Martin Luther the living Churchactually transformed itself, for the Roman Church was still pagan. HenryVIII simply said: 'There is no Church, there is only the State. ' Butwith Shakespeare the transformation had reached the State also. TheKing, the Father, the representative of the Consummate Self, the maximumof all life, the symbol of the consummate being, the becoming Supreme, Godlike, Infinite, he must perish and pass away. This Infinite was notinfinite, this consummation was not consummated, all this was fallible, false. It was rotten, corrupt. It must go. But Shakespeare was also thething itself. Hence his horror, his frenzy, his self-loathing. 

The King, the Emperor is killed in the soul of man, the old order oflife is over, the old tree is dead at the root. So said Shakespeare. Itwas finally enacted in Cromwell. Charles I took up the old position ofkingship by divine right. Like Hamlet's father, he was blamelessotherwise. But as representative of the old form of life, which mankindnow hated with frenzy, he must be cut down, removed. It was asymbolic act. 

The world, our world of Europe, had now really turned, swung round to anew goal, a new idea, the Infinite reached through the omission of Self. God is all that which is Not-Me. I am consummate when my Self, theresistant solid, is reduced and diffused into all that which is Not-Me:my neighbour, my enemy, the great Otherness. Then I am perfect. 

And from this belief the world began gradually to form a new State, anew body politic, in which the Self should be removed. There should beno king, no lords, no aristocrats. The world continued in its religiousbelief, beyond the French Revolution, beyond the great movement ofShelley and Godwin. There should be no Self. That which was supreme wasthat which was Not-Me, the other. The governing factor in the State wasthe idea of the good of others; that is, the Common Good. And the_vital_ governing idea in the State has been this idea since Cromwell. 

Before Cromwell the idea was 'For the King', because every man sawhimself consummated in the King. After Cromwell the idea was 'For thegood of my neighbour', or 'For the good of the people', or 'For the goodof the whole'. This has been our ruling idea, by which we have more orless lived. 

Now this has failed. Now we say that the Christian Infinite is notinfinite. We are tempted, like Nietzsche, to return back to the oldpagan Infinite, to say that is supreme. Or we are inclined, like theEnglish and the Pragmatist, to say, 'There is no Infinite, there is noAbsolute. The only Absolute is expediency, the only reality is sensationand momentariness. ' But we may say this, even act on it, _à la Sanine_. But we never believe it. 

What is really Absolute is the mystic Reason which connects bothInfinites, the Holy Ghost that relates both natures of God. If we nowwish to make a living State, we must build it up to the idea of the HolySpirit, the supreme Relationship. We must say, the pagan Infinite isinfinite, the Christian Infinite is infinite: these are our twoConsummations, in both of these we are consummated. But that whichrelates them alone is absolute. 

This Absolute of the Holy Ghost we may call Truth or Justice or Right. These are partial names, indefinite and unsatisfactory unless there bekept the knowledge of the two Infinites, pagan and Christian, which theygo between. When both are there, they are like a superb bridge, on whichone can stand and know the whole world, my world, the two halves ofthe universe. 

'_Essere, o non essere, è qui il punto. _'

To be or not to be was the question for Hamlet to settle. It is nolonger our question, at least, not in the same sense. When it is aquestion of death, the fashionable young suicide declares that hisself-destruction is the final proof of his own incontrovertible being. And as for not-being in our public life, we have achieved it as much asever we want to, as much as is necessary. Whilst in private life thereis a swing back to paltry selfishness as a creed. And in the war thereis the position of neutralization and nothingness. It is a question ofknowing how _to be_, and how _not to be_, for we must fulfil both. Enrico Persevalli was detestable with his '_Essere, o non essere_'. Hewhispered it in a hoarse whisper as if it were some melodramatic murderhe was about to commit. As a matter of fact, he knows quite well, andhas known all his life, that his pagan Infinite, his transport of theflesh and the supremacy of the male in fatherhood, is allunsatisfactory. All his life he has really cringed before the northernInfinite of the Not-Self, although he has continued in the Italian habitof Self. But it is mere habit, sham. 

How can he know anything about being and not-being when he is only amaudlin compromise between them, and all he wants is to be a maudlincompromise? He is neither one nor the other. He has neither being norriot-being. He is as equivocal as the monks. He was detestable, mouthingHamlet's sincere words. He has still to let go, to know what not-beingis, before he can _be_. Till he has gone through the Christian negationof himself, and has known the Christian consummation, he is a mereamorphous heap. 

For the soliloquies of Hamlet are as deep as the soul of man can go, inone direction, and as sincere as the Holy Spirit itself in theiressence. But thank heaven, the bog into which Hamlet struggled is almostsurpassed. 

It is a strange thing, if a man covers his face, and speaks with hiseyes blinded, how significant and poignant he becomes. The ghost of thisHamlet was very simple. He was wrapped down to the knees in a greatwhite cloth, and over his face was an open-work woollen shawl. But thenaïve blind helplessness and verity of his voice was strangelyconvincing. He seemed the most real thing in the play. From the kneesdownward he was Laertes, because he had on Laertes' white trousers andpatent leather slippers. Yet he was strangely real, a voice out ofthe dark. 

The Ghost is really one of the play's failures, it is so trivial andunspiritual and vulgar. And it was spoilt for me from the first. When Iwas a child I went to the twopenny travelling theatre to see _Hamlet_. The Ghost had on a helmet and a breastplate. I sat in pale transport. 

''Amblet, 'Amblet, I _am_ thy father's ghost. '

Then came a voice from the dark, silent audience, like a cynical knifeto my fond soul:

'Why tha arena, I can tell thy voice. '

The peasants loved Ophelia: she was in white with her hair down herback. Poor thing, she was pathetic, demented. And no wonder, afterHamlet's 'O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!' What then ofher young breasts and her womb? Hamlet with her was a very disagreeablesight. The peasants loved her. There was a hoarse roar, half ofindignation, half of roused passion, at the end of her scene. 

The graveyard scene, too, was a great success, but I could not bearHamlet. And the grave-digger in Italian was a mere buffoon. The wholescene was farcical to me because of the Italian, '_Questo cranio, Signore_--'And Enrico, dainty fellow, took the skull in a corner of hisblack cloak. As an Italian, he would not willingly touch it. It wasunclean. But he looked a fool, hulking himself in his lugubriousness. Hewas as self-important as D'Annunzio. 

The close fell flat. The peasants had applauded the whole graveyardscene wildly. But at the end of all they got up and crowded to thedoors, as if to hurry away: this in spite of Enrico's final feat: hefell backwards, smack down three steps of the throne platform, on to thestage. But planks and braced muscle will bounce, and Signer Amletobounced quite high again. 

It was the end of _Amleto_, and I was glad. But I loved the theatre, Iloved to look down on the peasants, who were so absorbed. At the end ofthe scenes the men pushed back their black hats, and rubbed their hairacross their brows with a pleased, excited movement. And the womenstirred in their seats. 

Just one man was with his wife and child, and he was of the same race asmy old woman at San Tommaso. He was fair, thin, and clear, abstract, ofthe mountains. He seemed to have gathered his wife and child togetherinto another, finer atmosphere, like the air of the mountains, and toguard them in it. This is the real Joseph, father of the child. He has afierce, abstract look, wild and untamed as a hawk, but like a hawk atits own nest, fierce with love. He goes out and buys a tiny bottle oflemonade for a penny, and the mother and child sip it in tiny sips, whilst he bends over, like a hawk arching its wings. 

It is the fierce spirit of the Ego come out of the primal infinite, butdetached, isolated, an aristocrat. He is not an Italian, dark-blooded. He is fair, keen as steel, with the blood of the mountaineer in him. Heis like my old spinning woman. It is curious how, with his wife andchild, he makes a little separate world down there in the theatre, likea hawk's nest, high and arid under the gleaming sky. 

The Bersaglieri sit close together in groups, so that there is astrange, corporal connexion between them. They have close-cropped, dark, slightly bestial heads, and thick shoulders, and thick brown hands oneach other's shoulders. When an act is over they pick up their cherishedhats and fling on their cloaks and go into the hall. They are ratherrich, the Bersaglieri. 

They are like young, half-wild oxen, such strong, sturdy, dark lads, thickly built and with strange hard heads, like young male caryatides. They keep close together, as if there were some physical instinctconnecting them. And they are quite womanless. There is a curiousinter-absorption among themselves, a sort of physical trance that holdsthem all, and puts their minds to sleep. There is a strange, hypnoticunanimity among them as they put on their plumed hats and go outtogether, always very close, as if their bodies must touch. Then theyfeel safe and content in this heavy, physical trance. They are in lovewith one another, the young men love the young men. They shrink from theworld beyond, from the outsiders, from all who are not Bersaglieri oftheir barracks. 

One man is a sort of leader. He is very straight and solid, solid like awall, with a dark, unblemished will. His cock-feathers slither in aprofuse, heavy stream from his black oil-cloth hat, almost to hisshoulder. He swings round. His feathers slip into a cascade. Then hegoes out to the hall, his feather tossing and falling richly. He must bewell off. The Bersaglieri buy their own black cock's-plumes, and somepay twenty or thirty francs for the bunch, so the maestra said. The poorones have only poor, scraggy plumes. 

There is something very primitive about these men. They remind me reallyof Agamemnon's soldiers clustered oil the seashore, men, all men, aliving, vigorous, physical host of men. But there is a pressure on theseItalian soldiers, as if they were men caryatides, with a great weight ontheir heads, making their brain hard, asleep, stunned. They all look isif their real brain were stunned, as if there were another centre ofphysical consciousness from which they lived. 

Separate from them all is Pietro, the young man who lounges on the wharfto carry things from the steamer. He starts up from sleep like awild-cat as somebody claps him on the shoulder. It is the start of a manwho has many enemies. He is almost an outlaw. Will he ever find himselfin prison? He is the _gamin_ of the village, well detested. 

He is twenty-four years old, thin, dark, handsome, with a cat-likelightness and grace, and a certain repulsive, _gamin_ evil in his face. Where everybody is so clean and tidy, he is almost ragged. His week'sbeard shows very black in his slightly hollow cheeks. He hates the manwho has waked him by clapping him on the shoulder. 

Pietro is already married, yet he behaves as if he were not. He has beencarrying on with a loose woman, the wife of the citron-coloured barber, the Siciliano. Then he seats himself on the women's side of the theatre, behind a young person from Bogliaco, who also has no reputation, andmakes her talk to him. He leans forward, resting his arms on the seatbefore him, stretching his slender, cat-like, flexible loins. Thepadrona of the hotel hates him--'_ein frecher Kerl_, ' she says withcontempt, and she looks away. Her eyes hate to see him. 

In the village there is the clerical party, which is the majority;there is the anti-clerical party, and there are the ne'er-do-wells. Theclerical people are dark and pious and cold; there is a curiousstone-cold, ponderous darkness over them, moral and gloomy. Then theanti-clerical party, with the Syndaco at the head, is bourgeois andrespectable as far as the middle-aged people are concerned, banal, respectable, shut off as by a wall from the clerical people. The younganti-clericals are the young bloods of the place, the men who gatherevery night in the more expensive and less-respectable cafe. These youngmen are all free-thinkers, great dancers, singers, players of theguitar. They are immoral and slightly cynical. Their leader is the youngshopkeeper, who has lived in Vienna, who is a bit of a bounder, with aveneer of sneering irony on an original good nature. He is well-to-do, and gives dances to which only the looser women go, with these recklessyoung men. He also gets up parties of pleasure, and is chieflyresponsible for the coming of the players to the theatre this carnival. These young men are disliked, but they belong to the important class, they are well-to-do, and they have the life of the village in theirhands. The clerical peasants are priest-ridden and good, because theyare poor and afraid and superstitious. There is, lastly, a sprinkling ofloose women, one who keeps the inn where the soldiers drink. These womenare a definite set. They know what they are, they pretend nothing else. They are not prostitutes, but just loose women. They keep to their ownclique, among men and women, never wanting to compromise anybody else. 

And beyond all these there are the Franciscan friars in their brownrobes, so shy, so silent, so obliterated, as they stand back in theshop, waiting to buy the bread for the monastery, waiting obscure andneutral, till no one shall be in the shop wanting to be served. Thevillage women speak to them in a curious neutral, official, slightlycontemptuous voice. They answer neutral and humble, though distinctly. 

At the theatre, now the play is over, the peasants in their black hatsand cloaks crowd the hall. Only Pietro, the wharf-lounger, has no cloak, and a bit of a cap on the side of his head instead of a black felt hat. His clothes are thin and loose on his thin, vigorous, cat-like body, andhe is cold, but he takes no notice. His hands are always in his pockets, his shoulders slightly raised. 

The few women slip away home. In the little theatre bar the well-to-doyoung atheists are having another drink. Not that they spend much. Atumbler of wine or a glass of vermouth costs a penny. And the wine ishorrible new stuff. Yet the little baker, Agostino, sits on a bench withhis pale baby on his knee, putting the wine to its lips. And the babydrinks, like a blind fledgeling. 

Upstairs, the quality has paid its visits and shaken hands: the Syndacoand the well-to-do half-Austrian owners of the woodyard, the Bertolini, have ostentatiously shown their mutual friendship; our padrone, theSigner Pietro Di Paoli, has visited his relatives the Graziani in thebox next the stage and has spent two intervals with us in our box;meanwhile, his two peasants standing down below, pathetic, thincontadini of the old school, like worn stones, have looked up at us asif we are the angels in heaven, with a reverential, devotional eye, theythemselves far away below, standing in the bay at the back, below all. 

The chemist and the grocer and the schoolmistress pay calls. They haveall sat self-consciously posed in the front of their boxes, like framedphotographs of themselves. The second grocer and the baker visit eachother. The barber looks in on the carpenter, then drops downstairs amongthe crowd. Class distinctions are cut very fine. As we pass with thepadrona of the hotel, who is a Bavarian, we stop to speak to our ownpadroni, the Di Paoli. They have a warm handshake and effusive politeconversation for us; for Maria Samuelli, a distant bow. We realizeour mistake. 

The barber--not the Siciliano, but flashy little Luigi with the bigtie-ring and the curls--knows all about the theatre. He says that EnricoPersevalli has for his mistress Carina, the servant in _Ghosts_: thatthe thin, gentle, old-looking king in _Hamlet_ is the husband ofAdelaida, and Carina is their daughter: that the old, sharp, fat littlebody of a queen is Adelaida's mother: that they all like EnricoPersevalli, because he is a very clever man: but that the 'Comic', IlBrillante, Francesco, is unsatisfied. 

In three performances in Epiphany week, the company took two hundred andsixty-five francs, which was phenomenal. The manager, Enrico Persevalli, and Adelaida pay twenty-four francs for every performance, or everyevening on which a performance is given, as rent for the theatre, including light. The company is completely satisfied with its receptionon the Lago di Garda. 

So it is all over. The Bersaglieri go running all the way home, becauseit is already past half past ten. The night is very dark. About fourmiles up the lake the searchlights of the Austrian border are swinging, looking for smugglers. Otherwise the darkness is complete. 

_4_

SAN GAUDENZIO

In the autumn the little rosy cyclamens blossom in the shade of thiswest side of the lake. They are very cold and fragrant, and their scentseems to belong to Greece, to the Bacchae. They are real flowers of thepast. They seem to be blossoming in the landscape of Phaedra and Helen. They bend down, they brood like little chill fires. They are littleliving myths that I cannot understand. 

After the cyclamens the Christmas roses are in bud. It is at this seasonthat the cacchi are ripe on the trees in the garden, whole naked treesfull of lustrous, orange-yellow, paradisal fruit, gleaming against thewintry blue sky. The monthly roses still blossom frail and pink, thereare still crimson and yellow roses. But the vines are bare and thelemon-houses shut. And then, mid-winter, the lowest buds of theChristmas roses appear under the hedges and rocks and by the streams. They are very lovely, these first large, cold, pure buds, like violets, like magnolias, but cold, lit up with the light from the snow. 

The days go by, through the brief silence of winter, when the sunshineis so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead leaves gleam brown, and water sounds hoarse in the ravines. It is so still and transcendent, the cypress trees poise like flames of forgotten darkness, that shouldhave been blown out at the end of the summer. For as we have candles tolight the darkness of night, so the cypresses are candles to keep thedarkness aflame in the full sunshine. 

Meanwhile, the Christmas roses become many. They rise from their budded, intact humbleness near the ground, they rise up, they throw up theircrystal, they become handsome, they are heaps of confident, mysteriouswhiteness in the shadow of a rocky stream. It is almost uncanny to seethem. They are the flowers of darkness, white and wonderfulbeyond belief. 

Then their radiance becomes soiled and brown, they thaw, break, andscatter and vanish away. Already the primroses are coming out, and thealmond is in bud. The winter is passing away. On the mountains thefierce snow gleams apricot gold as evening approaches, golden, apricot, but so bright that it is almost frightening. What can be so fiercelygleaming when all is shadowy? It is something inhuman and unmitigatedbetween heaven and earth. 

The heavens are strange and proud all the winter, their progress goes onwithout reference to the dim earth. The dawns come white andtranslucent, the lake is a moonstone in the dark hills, then across thelake there stretches a vein of fire, then a whole, orange, flashingtrack over the whiteness. There is the exquisite silent passage of theday, and then at evening the afterglow, a huge incandescence of rose, hanging above and gleaming, as if it were the presence of a host ofangels in rapture. It gleams like a rapturous chorus, then passes away, and the stars appear, large and flashing. 

Meanwhile, the primroses are dawning on the ground, their light isgrowing stronger, spreading over the banks and under the bushes. Betweenthe olive roots the violets are out, large, white, grave violets, andless serious blue ones. And looking down the bill, among the grey smokeof olive leaves, pink puffs of smoke are rising up. It is the almond andthe apricot trees, it is the Spring. 

Soon the primroses are strong on the ground. There is a bank of small, frail crocuses shooting the lavender into this spring. And then thetussocks and tussocks of primroses are fully out, there is full morningeverywhere on the banks and roadsides and stream-sides, and around theolive roots, a morning of primroses underfoot, with an invisiblethreading of many violets, and then the lovely blue clusters ofhepatica, really like pieces of blue sky showing through a clarity ofprimrose. The few birds are piping thinly and shyly, the streams singagain, there is a strange flowering shrub full of incense, overturnedflowers of crimson and gold, like Bohemian glass. Between the oliveroots new grass is coming, day is leaping all clear and coloured fromthe earth, it is full Spring, full first rapture. 

Does it pass away, or does it only lose its pristine quality? It deepensand intensifies, like experience. The days seem to be darker and richer, there is a sense of power in the strong air. On the banks by the lakethe orchids are out, many, many pale bee-orchids standing clear from theshort grass over the lake. And in the hollows are the grape hyacinths, purple as noon, with the heavy, sensual fragrance of noon. They aremany-breasted, and full of milk, and ripe, and sun-darkened, likemany-breasted Diana. 

We could not bear to live down in the village any more, now that thedays opened large and spacious and the evenings drew out in sunshine. Wecould not bear the indoors, when above us the mountains shone in clearair. It was time to go up, to climb with the sun. 

So after Easter we went to San Gaudenzio. It was three miles away, upthe winding mule-track that climbed higher and higher along the lake. Leaving the last house of the village, the path wound on the steep, cliff-like side of the lake, curving into the hollow where the landsliphad tumbled the rocks in chaos, then out again on to the bluff of aheadland that hung over the lake. 

Thus we came to the tall barred gate of San Gaudenzio, on which was theusual little fire-insurance tablet, and then the advertisements forbeer, 'Birra, Verona', which is becoming a more and more popular drink. 

Through the gate, inside the high wall, is the little Garden of Eden, aproperty of three or four acres fairly level upon a headland over thelake. The high wall girds it on the land side, and makes it perfectlysecluded. On the lake-side it is bounded by the sudden drops of theland, in sharp banks and terraces, overgrown with ilex and with laurelbushes, down to the brink of the cliff, so that the thicket of the firstdeclivities seems to safeguard the property. 

The pink farm-house stands almost in the centre of the little territory, among the olive trees. It is a solid, six-roomed place, about fiftyyears old, having been rebuilt by Paolo's uncle. Here we came to livefor a time with the Fiori, Maria and Paolo, and their three children, Giovanni and Marco and Felicina. 

Paolo had inherited, or partly inherited, San Gaudenzio, which had beenin his family for generations. He was a peasant of fifty-three, verygrey and wrinkled and worn-looking, but at the same time robust, withfull strong limbs and a powerful chest. His face was old, but his bodywas solid and powerful. His eyes were blue like upper ice, beautiful. Hehad been a fair-haired man, now he was almost white. 

He, was strangely like the pictures of peasants in the northern Italianpictures, with the same curious nobility, the same aristocratic, eternallook of motionlessness, something statuesque. His head was hard andfine, the bone finely constructed, though the skin of his face was looseand furrowed with work. His temples had that fine, hard clarity which isseen in Mantegna, an almost jewel-like quality. 

We all loved Paolo, he was so finished in his being, detached, with analmost classic simplicity and gentleness, an eternal kind of sureness. There was also something concluded and unalterable about him, somethinginaccessible. 

Maria Fiori was different. She was from the plain, like EnricoPersevalli and the Bersaglier from the Venetian district. She remindedme again of oxen, broad-boned and massive in physique, dark-skinned, slow in her soul. But, like the oxen of the plain, she knew her work, she knew the other people engaged in the work. Her intelligence wasattentive and purposive. She had been a housekeeper, a servant, inVenice and Verona, before her marriage. She had got the hang of thisworld of commerce and activity, she wanted to master it. But she wasweighted down by her heavy animal blood. 

Paolo and she were the opposite sides of the universe, the light and thedark. Yet they lived together now without friction, detached, eachsubordinated in their common relationship. With regard to Maria, Paoloomitted himself; Maria omitted herself with regard to Paolo. Their soulswere silent and detached, completely apart, and silent, quite silent. They shared the physical relationship of marriage as if it weresomething beyond them, a third thing. 

They had suffered very much in the earlier stages of their connexion. Now the storm had gone by, leaving them, as it were, spent. They wereboth by nature passionate, vehement. But the lines of their passion wereopposite. Hers was the primitive, crude, violent flux of the blood, emotional and undiscriminating, but wanting to mix and mingle. His wasthe hard, clear, invulnerable passion of the bones, finely tempered andunchangeable. She was the flint and he the steel. But in continualstriking together they only destroyed each other. The fire was a thirdthing, belonging to neither of them. 

She was still heavy and full of desire. She was much younger than he. 

'How long did you know your Signora before you were married?' she askedme. 

'Six weeks, ' I said. 

'_Il Paolo e me, venti giorni, tre settimane_, ' she cried vehemently. Three weeks they had known each other when they married. She stilltriumphed in the fact. So did Paolo. But it was past, strangely andrather terribly past. 

What did they want when they came together, Paolo and she? He was a manover thirty, she was a woman of twenty-three. They were both violent indesire and of strong will. They came together at once, like twowrestlers almost matched in strength. Their meetings must have beensplendid. Giovanni, the eldest child, was a tall lad of sixteen, withsoft brown hair and grey eyes, and a clarity of brow, and the same calmsimplicity of bearing which made Paolo so complete; but the son had atthe same time a certain brownness of skin, a heaviness of blood, whichhe had from his mother. Paolo was so clear and translucent. 

In Giovanni the fusion of the parents was perfect, he was a perfectspark from the flint and steel. There was in Paolo a subtle intelligencein feeling, a delicate appreciation of the other person. But the mindwas unintelligent, he could not grasp a new order. Maria Fiori was muchsharper and more adaptable to the ways of the world. Paolo had an almostglass-like quality, fine and clear and perfectly tempered; but he wasalso finished and brittle. Maria was much coarser, more vulgar, but alsoshe was more human, more fertile, with crude potentiality. His passionwas too fixed in its motion, hers too loose and overwhelming. 

But Giovanni was beautiful, gentle, and courtly like Paolo, but warm, like Maria, ready to flush like a girl with anger or confusion. He stoodstraight and tall, and seemed to look into the far distance with hisclear grey eyes. Yet also he could look at one and touch one with hislook, he could meet one. Paolo's blue eyes were like the eyes of the oldspinning-woman, clear and blue and belonging to the mountains, theirvision seemed to end in space, abstract. They reminded me of the eyes ofthe eagle, which looks into the sun, and which teaches its young to dothe same, although they are unwilling. 

Marco, the second son, was thirteen years old. He was his mother'sfavourite, Giovanni loved his father best. But Marco was his mother'sson, with the same brown-gold and red complexion, like a pomegranate, and coarse black hair, and brown eyes like pebble, like agate, like ananimal's eyes. He had the same broad, bovine figure, though he was onlya boy. But there was some discrepancy in him. He was not unified, he hadno identity. 

He was strong and full of animal life, but always aimless, as though hiswits scarcely controlled him. But he loved his mother with afundamental, generous, undistinguishing love. Only he always forgot whathe was going to do. He was much more sensitive than Maria, more shy andreluctant. But his shyness, his sensitiveness only made him more aimlessand awkward, a tiresome clown, slack and uncontrolled, witless. All daylong his mother shouted and shrilled and scolded at him, or hit himangrily. He did not mind, he came up like a cork, warm and roguish andcuriously appealing. She loved him with a fierce protective love, grounded on pain. There was such a split, a contrariety in his soul, onepart reacting against the other, which landed him always into trouble. 

It was when Marco was a baby that Paolo had gone to America. They werepoor on San Gaudenzio. There were the few olive trees, the grapes, andthe fruit; there was the one cow. But these scarcely made a living. Neither was Maria content with the real peasants' lot any more, polentaat midday and vegetable soup in the evening, and no way out, nothing tolook forward to, no future, only this eternal present. She had been inservice, and had eaten bread and drunk coffee, and known the flux andvariable chance of life. She had departed from the old staticconception. She knew what one might be, given a certain chance. Thefixture was the thing she militated against. So Paolo went to America, to California, into the gold mines. 

Maria wanted the future, the endless possibility of life on earth. Shewanted her sons to be freer, to achieve a new plane of living. Thepeasant's life was a slave's life, she said, railing against the povertyand the drudgery. And it was quite true, Paolo and Giovanni workedtwelve and fourteen hours a day at heavy laborious work that would havebroken an Englishman. And there was nothing at the end of it. Yet Paolowas even happy so. This was the truth to him. 

It was the mother who wanted things different. It was she who railed andrailed against the miserable life of the peasants. When we were going tothrow to the fowls a dry broken penny roll of white bread, Maria said, with anger and shame and resentment in her voice: 'Give it to Marco, hewill eat it. It isn't too dry for him. '

White bread was a treat for them even now, when everybody eats bread. And Maria Fiori hated it, that bread should be a treat to her children, when it was the meanest food of all the rest of the world. She was inopposition to this order. She did not want her sons to be peasants, fixed and static as posts driven in the earth. She wanted them to be inthe great flux of life in the midst of all possibilities. So she atlength sent Paolo to America to the gold-mines. Meanwhile, she coveredthe wall of her parlour with picture postcards, to bring the outer worldof cities and industries into her house. 

Paolo was entirely remote from Maria's world. He had not yet evengrasped the fact of money, not thoroughly. He reckoned in land and olivetrees. So he had the old fatalistic attitude to his circumstances, evento his food. The earth was the Lord's and the fulness thereof; also theleanness thereof. Paolo could only do his part and leave the rest. If heate in plenty, having oil and wine and sausage in the house, and plentyof maize-meal, he was glad with the Lord. If he ate meagrely, of poorpolenta, that was fate, it was the skies that ruled these things, and noman ruled the skies. He took his fate as it fell from the skies. 

Maria was exorbitant about money. She would charge us all she could forwhat we had and for what was done for us. 

Yet she was not mean in her soul. In her soul she was in a state ofanger because of her own closeness. It was a violation to her stronganimal nature. Yet her mind had wakened to the value of money. She knewshe could alter her position, the position of her children, by virtue ofmoney. She knew it was only money that made the difference betweenmaster and servant. And this was all the difference she wouldacknowledge. So she ruled her life according to money. Her supremepassion was to be mistress rather than servant, her supreme aspirationfor her children was that in the end they might be masters andnot servants. 

Paolo was untouched by all this. For him there was some divinity about amaster which even America had not destroyed. If we came in for supperwhilst the family was still at table he would have the children at oncetake their plates to the wall, he would have Maria at once set the tablefor us, though their own meal were never finished. And this was notservility, it was the dignity of a religious conception. Paolo regardedus as belonging to the Signoria, those who are elect, near to God. Andthis was part of his religious service. His life was a ritual. It wasvery beautiful, but it made me unhappy, the purity of his spirit was sosacred and the actual facts seemed such a sacrilege to it. Maria wasnearer to the actual truth when she said that money was the onlydistinction. But Paolo had hold of an eternal truth, where hers wastemporal. Only Paolo misapplied this eternal truth. He should not havegiven Giovanni the inferior status and a fat, mean Italian tradesman thesuperior. That was false, a real falsity. Maria knew it and hated it. But Paolo could not distinguish between the accident of riches and thearistocracy of the spirit. So Maria rejected him altogether, and went tothe other extreme. We were all human beings like herself; naked, therewas no distinction between us, no higher nor lower. But we werepossessed of more money than she. And she had to steer her coursebetween these two conceptions. The money alone made the realdistinction, the separation; the being, the life made the common level. 

Paolo had the curious peasant's avarice also, but it was not meanness. It was a sort of religious conservation of his own power, his own self. Fortunately he could leave all business transactions on our account toMaria, so that his relation with us was purely ritualistic. He wouldhave given me anything, trusting implicitly that I would fulfil my ownnature as Signore, one of those more godlike, nearer the light ofperfection than himself, a peasant. It was pure bliss to him to bring usthe first-fruit of the garden, it was like laying it on an altar. 

And his fulfilment was in a fine, subtle, exquisite relationship, not ofmanners, but subtle interappreciation. He worshipped a finerunderstanding and a subtler tact. A further fineness and dignity andfreedom in bearing was to him an approach towards the divine, so heloved men best of all, they fulfilled his soul. A woman was always awoman, and sex was a low level whereon he did not esteem himself. But aman, a doer, the instrument of God, he was really godlike. 

Paolo was a Conservative. For him the world was established and divinein its establishment. His vision grasped a small circle. A finer nature, a higher understanding, took in a greater circle, comprehended thewhole. So that when Paolo was in relation to a man of further vision, hehimself was extended towards the whole. Thus he was fulfilled. And hisinitial assumption was that every signore, every gentleman, was a man offurther, purer vision than himself. This assumption was false. ButMaria's assumption, that no one had a further vision, no one was moreelect than herself, that we are all one flesh and blood and being, waseven more false. Paolo was mistaken in actual life, but Maria wasultimately mistaken. 

Paolo, conservative as he was, believing that a priest must be a priestof God, yet very rarely went to church. And he used the religious oathsthat Maria hated, even _Porca-Maria_. He always used oaths, eitherBacchus or God or Mary or the Sacrament. Maria was always offended. Yetit was she who, in her soul, jeered at the Church and at religion. Shewanted the human society as the absolute, without religiousabstractions. So Paolo's oaths enraged her, because of their profanity, she said. But it was really because of their subscribing to anothersuperhuman order. She jeered at the clerical people. She made a loudclamour of derision when the parish priest of the village above wentdown to the big village on the lake, and across the piazza, the quay, with two pigs in a sack on his shoulder. This was a real picture of thesacred minister to her. 

One day, when a storm had blown down an olive tree in front of thehouse, and Paolo and Giovanni were beginning to cut it up, this samepriest of Mugiano came to San Gaudenzio. He was an iron-grey, thin, disreputable-looking priest, very talkative and loud and queer. Heseemed like an old ne'er-do-well in priests' black, and he talkedloudly, almost to himself, as drunken people do. At once _he_ must showthe Fiori how to cut up the tree, he must have the axe from Paolo. Heshouted to Maria for a glass of wine. She brought it out to him with asort of insolent deference, insolent contempt of the man and traditionaldeference to the cloth. The priest drained the tumblerful of wine at onedrink, his thin throat with its Adam's apple working. And he did not paythe penny. 

Then he stripped off his cassock and put away his hat, and, a ludicrousfigure in ill-fitting black knee-breeches and a not very clean shirt, ared handkerchief round his neck, he proceeded to give great extravagantblows at the tree. He was like a caricature. In the doorway Maria wasencouraging him rather jeeringly, whilst she winked at me. Marco wasstifling his hysterical amusement in his mother's apron, and prancingwith glee. Paolo and Giovanni stood by the fallen tree, very grave andunmoved, inscrutable, abstract. Then the youth came away to the doorway, with a flush mounting on his face and a grimace distorting itsyoungness. Only Paolo, unmoved and detached, stood by the tree withunchanging, abstract face, very strange, his eyes fixed in the agelessstare which is so characteristic. 

Meanwhile the priest swung drunken blows at the tree, his thin buttocksbending in the green-black broadcloth, supported on thin shanks, andthin throat growing dull purple in the red-knotted kerchief. Nevertheless he was doing the job. His face was wet with sweat. Hewanted another glass of wine. 

He took no notice of us. He was strangely a local, even a mountebankfigure, but entirely local, an appurtenance of the district. 

It was Maria who jeeringly told us the story of the priest, who shruggedher shoulders to imply that he was a contemptible figure. Paolo sat withthe abstract look on his face, as of one who hears and does not hear, isnot really concerned. He never opposed or contradicted her, but stayedapart. It was she who was violent and brutal in her ways. But sometimesPaolo went into a rage, and then Maria, everybody, was afraid. It was awhite heavy rage, when his blue eyes shone unearthly, and his mouthopened with a curious drawn blindness of the old Furies. There wassomething of the cruelty of a falling mass of snow, heavy, horrible. Maria drew away, there was a silence. Then the avalanche was finished. 

They must have had some cruel fights before they learned to withdrawfrom each other so completely. They must have begotten Marco in hatred, terrible disintegrated opposition and otherness. And it was after this, after the child of their opposition was born, that Paolo went away toCalifornia, leaving his San Gaudenzio, travelling with severalcompanions, like blind beasts, to Havre, and thence to New York, then toCalifornia. He stayed five years in the gold-mines, in a wild valley, living with a gang of Italians in a town of corrugated iron. 

All the while he had never really left San Gaudenzio. I asked him, 'Usedyou to think of it, the lake, the Monte Baldo, the laurel trees down theslope?' He tried to see what I wanted to know. Yes, he said--butuncertainly. I could see that he had never been really homesick. It hadbeen very wretched on the ship going from Havre to New York. That hetold me about. And he told me about the gold-mines, the galleries, thevalley, the huts in the valley. But he had never really fretted for SanGaudenzio whilst he was in California. 

In real truth he was at San Gaudenzio all the time, his fate was rivetedthere. His going away was an excursion from reality, a kind ofsleep-walking. He left his own reality there in the soil above the lakeof Garda. That his body was in California, what did it matter? It wasmerely for a time, and for the sake of his own earth, his land. He wouldpay off the mortgage. But the gate at home was his gate all the time, his hand was on the latch. 

As for Maria, he had felt his duty towards her. She was part of hislittle territory, the rooted centre of the world. He sent her home themoney. But it did not occur to him, in his soul, to miss her. He wantedher to be safe with the children, that was all. In his flesh perhaps hemissed the woman. But his spirit was even more completely isolated sincemarriage. Instead of having united with each other, they had made eachother more terribly distinct and separate. He could live aloneeternally. It was his condition. His sex was functional, like eating anddrinking. To take a woman, a prostitute at the camp, or not to take her, was no more vitally important than to get drunk or not to get drunk of aSunday. And fairly often on Sunday Paolo got drunk. His world remainedunaltered. 

But Maria suffered more bitterly. She was a young, powerful, passionatewoman, and she was unsatisfied body and soul. Her soul's satisfactionbecame a bodily unsatisfaction. Her blood was heavy, violent, anarchic, insisting on the equality of the blood in all, and therefore on her ownabsolute right to satisfaction. 

She took a wine licence for San Gaudenzio, and she sold wine. There weremany scandals about her. Somehow it did not matter very much, outwardly. The authorities were too divided among themselves to enforce publicopinion. Between the clerical party and the radicals and the socialists, what canons were left that were absolute? Besides, these wild villageshad always been ungoverned. 

Yet Maria suffered. Even she, according to her conviction belonged toPaolo. And she felt betrayed, betrayed and deserted. The iron had gonedeep into her soul. Paolo had deserted her, she had been betrayed toother men for five years. There was something cruel and implacable inlife. She sat sullen and heavy, for all her quick activity. Her soul wassullen and heavy. 

I could never believe Felicina was Paolo's child. She was anunprepossessing little girl, affected, cold, selfish, foolish. Maria andPaolo, with real Italian greatness, were warm and natural towards thechild in her. But they did not love her in their very souls, she was thefruit of ash to them. And this must have been the reason that she was soself-conscious and foolish and affected, small child that she was. 

Paolo had come back from America a year before she was born--a yearbefore she was born, Maria insisted. The husband and wife lived togetherin a relationship of complete negation. In his soul he was sad for her, and in her soul she felt annulled. He sat at evening in thechimney-seat, smoking, always pleasant and cheerful, not for a momentthinking he was unhappy. It had all taken place in his subconsciousness. But his eyebrows and eyelids were lifted in a kind of vacancy, his blueeyes were round and somehow finished, though he was so gentle andvigorous in body. But the very quick of him was killed. He was like aghost in the house, with his loose throat and powerful limbs, his open, blue extinct eyes, and his musical, slightly husky voice, that seemed tosound out of the past. 

And Maria, stout and strong and handsome like a peasant woman, wentabout as if there were a weight on her, and her voice was high andstrident. She, too, was finished in her life. But she remained unbroken, her will was like a hammer that destroys the old form. 

Giovanni was patiently labouring to learn a little English. Paolo knewonly four or five words, the chief of which were 'a'right', 'boss', 'bread', and 'day'. The youth had these by heart, and was studying alittle more. He was very graceful and lovable, but he found it difficultto learn. A confused light, like hot tears, would come into his eyeswhen he had again forgotten the phrase. But he carried the paper aboutwith him, and he made steady progress. 

He would go to America, he also. Not for anything would he stay in SanGaudenzio. His dream was to be gone. He would come back. The world wasnot San Gaudenzio to Giovanni. 

The old order, the order of Paolo and of Pietro di Paoli, thearistocratic order of the supreme God, God the Father, the Lord, waspassing away from the beautiful little territory. The household nolonger receives its food, oil and wine and maize, from out of the earthin the motion of fate. The earth is annulled, and money takes its place. The landowner, who is the lieutenant of God and of Fate, like Abraham, he, too, is annulled. There is now the order of the rich, whichsupersedes the order of the Signoria. 

It is passing away from Italy as it has passed from England. The peasantis passing away, the workman is taking his place. The stability is gone. Paolo is a ghost, Maria is the living body. And the new order meanssorrow for the Italian more even than it has meant for us. But he willhave the new order. 

San Gaudenzio is already becoming a thing of the past. Below the house, where the land drops in sharp slips to the sheer cliff's edge, overwhich it is Maria's constant fear that Felicina will tumble, there arethe deserted lemon gardens of the little territory, snug down below. They are invisible till one descends by tiny paths, sheer down intothem. And there they stand, the pillars and walls erect, but a deademptiness prevailing, lemon trees all dead, gone, a few vines in theirplace. It is only twenty years since the lemon trees finally perished ofa disease and were not renewed. But the deserted terrace, shut betweengreat walls, descending in their openness full to the south, to the lakeand the mountain opposite, seem more terrible than Pompeii in theirsilence and utter seclusion. The grape hyacinths flower in the cracks, the lizards run, this strange place hangs suspended and forgotten, forgotten for ever, its erect pillars utterly meaningless. 

I used to sit and write in the great loft of the lemon-house, high up, far, far from the ground, the open front giving across the lake and themountain snow opposite, flush with twilight. The old matting and boards, the old disused implements of lemon culture made shadows in the desertedplace. Then there would come the call from the back, away above:'_Venga, venga mangiare_. '

We ate in the kitchen, where the olive and laurel wood burned in theopen fireplace. It was always soup in the evening. Then we played gamesor cards, all playing; or there was singing, with the accordion, andsometimes a rough mountain peasant with a guitar. 

But it is all passing away. Giovanni is in America, unless he has comeback to the War. He will not want to live in San Gaudenzio when he is aman, he says. He and Marco will not spend their lives wringing a littleoil and wine out of the rocky soil, even if they are not killed in thefighting which is going on at the end of the lake. In my loft by thelemon-houses now I should hear the guns. And Giovanni kissed me with akind of supplication when I went on to the steamer, as if he werebeseeching for a soul. His eyes were bright and clear and lit up withcourage. He will make a good fight for the new soul he wants--that is, if they do not kill him in this War. 

_5_

THE DANCE

Maria had no real licence for San Gaudenzio, yet the peasants alwayscalled for wine. It is easy to arrange in Italy. The penny is paidanother time. 

The wild old road that skirts the lake-side, scrambling always higher asthe precipice becomes steeper, climbing and winding to the villagesperched high up, passes under the high boundary-wall of San Gaudenzio, between that and the ruined church. But the road went just as muchbetween the vines and past the house as outside, under the wall; for thehigh gates were always open, and men or women and mules come into theproperty to call at the door of the homestead. There was a loud shout, 'Ah--a--a--ah--Mari--a. O--O--Oh Pa'o!' from outside, another wild, inarticulate cry from within, and one of the Fiori appeared in thedoorway to hail the newcomer. 

It was usually a man, sometimes a peasant from Mugiano, high up, sometimes a peasant from the wilds of the mountain, a wood-cutter, or acharcoal-burner. He came in and sat in the house-place, his glass ofwine in his hand between his knees, or on the floor between his feet, and he talked in a few wild phrases, very shy, like a hawk indoors, andunintelligible in his dialect. 

Sometimes we had a dance. Then, for the wine to drink, three men camewith mandolines and guitars, and sat in a corner playing their rapidtunes, while all danced on the dusty brick floor of the little parlour. No strange women were invited, only men; the young bloods from the bigvillage on the lake, the wild men from above. They danced the slow, trailing, lilting polka-waltz round and round the small room, theguitars and mandolines twanging rapidly, the dust rising from the softbricks. There were only the two English women: so men danced with men, as the Italians love to do. They love even better to dance with men, with a dear blood-friend, than with women. 

'It's better like this, two men?' Giovanni says to me, his blue eyeshot, his face curiously tender. 

The wood-cutters and peasants take off their coats, their throats arebare. They dance with strange intentness, particularly if they have forpartner an English Signora. Their feet in thick boots are curiouslyswift and significant. And it is strange to see the Englishwomen, asthey dance with the peasants transfigured with a kind of brilliantsurprise. All the while the peasants are very courteous, but quiet. Theysee the women dilate and flash, they think they have found a footing, they are certain. So the male dancers are quiet, but even grandiloquent, their feet nimble, their bodies wild and confident. 

They are at a loss when the two English Signoras move together and laughexcitedly at the end of the dance. 

'Isn't it fine?'

'Fine! Their arms are like iron, carrying you round. '

'Yes! Yes! And the muscles on their shoulders! I never knew there weresuch muscles! I'm almost frightened. '

'But it's fine, isn't it? I'm getting into the dance. '

'Yes--yes--you've only to let them take you. '

Then the glasses are put down, the guitars give their strange, vibrant, almost painful summons, and the dance begins again. 

It is a strange dance, strange and lilting, and changing as the musicchanged. But it had always a kind of leisurely dignity, a trailing kindof polka-waltz, intimate, passionate, yet never hurried, never violentin its passion, always becoming more intense. The women's faces changedto a kind of transported wonder, they were in the very rhythm ofdelight. From the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thincloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, intheir black hats and their cloaks, sat obscurely in the corner, making amusic that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifterand more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and to implicateother strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women driftingand palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze thatwas subtly rushing upon them, through them; the men worked their feet, their thighs swifter, more vividly, the music came to an almostintolerable climax, there was a moment when the dance passed into apossession, the men caught up the women and swung them from the earth, leapt with them for a second, and then the next phase of the dance hadbegun, slower again, more subtly interwoven, taking perfect, oh, exquisite delight in every interrelated movement, a rhythm within arhythm, a subtle approaching and drawing nearer to a climax, nearer, till, oh, there was the surpassing lift and swing of the women, when thewoman's body seemed like a boat lifted over the powerful, exquisite waveof the man's body, perfect, for a moment, and then once more the slow, intense, nearer movement of the dance began, always nearer, nearer, always to a more perfect climax. 

And the women waited as if in transport for the climax, when they wouldbe flung into a movement surpassing all movement. They were flung, borneaway, lifted like a boat on a supreme wave, into the zenith and nave ofthe heavens, consummate. 

Then suddenly the dance crashed to an end, and the dancers stoodstranded, lost, bewildered, on a strange shore. The air was full of reddust, half-lit by the lamp on the wall; the players in the corner wereputting down their instruments to take up their glasses. 

And the dancers sat round the wall, crowding in the little room, faintwith the transport of repeated ecstasy. There was a subtle smile on theface of the men, subtle, knowing, so finely sensual that the consciouseyes could scarcely look at it. And the women were dazed, like creaturesdazzled by too much light. The light was still on their faces, like ablindness, a reeling, like a transfiguration. The men were bringingwine, on a little tin tray, leaning with their proud, vivid loins, theirfaces flickering with the same subtle smile. Meanwhile, Maria Fiori wassplashing water, much water, on the red floor. There was the smell ofwater among the glowing, transfigured men and women who sat gleaming inanother world, round the walls. 

The peasants have chosen their women. For the dark, handsomeEnglishwoman, who looks like a slightly malignant Madonna, comes IlDuro; for the '_bella bionda_', the wood-cutter. But the peasants havealways to take their turn after the young well-to-do men from thevillage below. 

Nevertheless, they are confident. They cannot understand themiddle-class diffidence of the young men who wear collars and ties andfinger-rings. 

The wood-cutter from the mountain is of medium height, dark, thin, andhard as a hatchet, with eyes that are black like the very flaming thrustof night. He is quite a savage. There is something strange about hisdancing, the violent way he works one shoulder. He has a wooden leg, from the knee-joint. Yet he dances well, and is inordinately proud. Heis fierce as a bird, and hard with energy as a thunderbolt. He willdance with the blonde signora. But he never speaks. He is like someviolent natural phenomenon rather than a person. The woman begins towilt a little in his possession. 

'_È bello--il ballo?_' he asked at length, one direct, flashingquestion. 

'_Si--molto bello_, ' cries the woman, glad to have speech again. 

The eyes of the wood-cutter flash like actual possession. He seems nowto have come into his own. With all his senses, he is dominant, sure. 

He is inconceivably vigorous in body, and his dancing is almost perfect, with a little catch in it, owing to his lameness, which brings almost apure intoxication. Every muscle in his body is supple as steel, supple, as strong as thunder, and yet so quick, so delicately swift, it isalmost unbearable. As he draws near to the swing, the climax, theecstasy, he seems to lie in wait, there is a sense of a great strengthcrouching ready. Then it rushes forth, liquid, perfect, transcendent, the woman swoons over in the dance, and it goes on, enjoyment, infinite, incalculable enjoyment. He is like a god, a strange natural phenomenon, most intimate and compelling, wonderful. 

But he is not a human being. The woman, somewhere shocked in herindependent soul, begins to fall away from him. She has another being, which he has not touched, and which she will fall back upon. The danceis over, she will fall back on herself. It is perfect, too perfect. 

During the next dance, while she is in the power of the educated Ettore, a perfect and calculated voluptuary, who knows how much he can get outof this Northern woman, and only how much, the wood-cutter stands on theedge of the darkness, in the open doorway, and watches. He is fixed uponher, established, perfect. And all the while she is aware of theinsistent hawk-like poising of the face of the wood-cutter, poised onthe edge of the darkness, in the doorway, in possession, unrelinquishing. 

And she is angry. There is something stupid, absurd, in the hard, talon-like eyes watching so fiercely and so confidently in the doorway, sure, unmitigated. Has the creature no sense?

The woman reacts from him. For some time she will take no notice of him. But he waits, fixed. Then she comes near to him, and his will seems totake hold of her. He looks at her with a strange, proud, inhumanconfidence, as if his influence with her was already accomplished. 

'_Venga--venga un po'_, ' he says, jerking his head strangely to thedarkness. 

'What?' she replies, and passes shaken and dilated and brilliant, consciously ignoring him, passes away among the others, among thosewho are safe. 

There is food in the kitchen, great hunks of bread, sliced sausage thatMaria has made, wine, and a little coffee. But only the quality come toeat. The peasants may not come in. There is eating and drinking in thelittle house, the guitars are silent. It is eleven o'clock. 

Then there is singing, the strange bestial singing of these hills. Sometimes the guitars can play an accompaniment, but usually not. Thenthe men lift up their heads and send out the high, half-howling music, astounding. The words are in dialect. They argue among themselves for amoment: will the Signoria understand? They sing. The Signoria does notunderstand in the least. So with a strange, slightly malignant triumph, the men sing all the verses of their song, sitting round the walls ofthe little parlour. Their throats move, their faces have a slightmocking smile. The boy capers in the doorway like a faun, with glee, hisstraight black hair falling over his forehead. The elder brother sitsstraight and flushed, but even his eyes glitter with a kind of yellowlight of laughter. Paolo also sits quiet, with the invisible smile onhis face. ' Only Maria, large and active, prospering now, keepscollected, ready to order a shrill silence in the same way as she ordersthe peasants, violently, to keep their places. 

The boy comes to me and says:

'Do you know, Signore, what they are singing?'

'No, ' I say. 

So he capers with furious glee. The men with the watchful eyes, allroused, sit round the wall and sing more distinctly:

 _Si verrà la primavera Fiorann' le mandoline, Vienn' di basso le Trentine Coi 'taliani far' l'amor. _

But the next verses are so improper that I pretend not to understand. The women, with wakened, dilated faces, are listening, listening hard, their two faces beautiful in their attention, as if listening tosomething magical, a long way off. And the men sitting round the wallsing more plainly, coming nearer to the correct Italian. The song comesloud and vibrating and maliciously from their reedy throats, itpenetrates everybody. The foreign women can understand the sound, theycan feel the malicious, suggestive mockery. But they cannot catch thewords. The smile becomes more dangerous on the faces of the men. 

Then Maria Fiori sees that I have understood, and she cries, in herloud, overriding voice:

'_Basta--basta. _

The men get up, straighten their bodies with a curious, offeringmovement. The guitars and mandolines strike the vibrating strings. Butthe vague Northern reserve has come over the Englishwomen. They danceagain, but without the fusion in the dance. They have had enough. 

The musicians are thanked, they rise and go into the night. The men passoff in pairs. But the wood-cutter, whose name and whose nickname I couldnever hear, still hovered on the edge of the darkness. 

Then Maria sent him also away, complaining that he was too wild, _proprio selvatico_, and only the 'quality' remained, the well-to-doyouths from below. There was a little more coffee, and a talking, astory of a man who had fallen over a declivity in a lonely part goinghome drunk in the evening, and had lain unfound for eighteen hours. Thena story of a donkey who had kicked a youth in the chest and killed him. 

But the women were tired, they would go to bed. Still the two young menwould not go away. We all went out to look at the night. 

The stars were very bright overhead, the mountain opposite and themountains behind us faintly outlined themselves on the sky. Below, thelake was a black gulf. A little wind blew cold from the Adige. 

In the morning the visitors had gone. They had insisted on staying thenight. They had eaten eight eggs each and much bread at one o'clock inthe morning. Then they had gone to sleep, lying on the floor in thesitting-room. 

In the early sunshine they had drunk coffee and gone down to the villageon the lake. Maria was very pleased. She would have made a good deal ofmoney. The young men were rich. Her cupidity seemed like hervery blossom. 

_6_

IL DURO

The first time I saw Il Duro was on a sunny day when there came up aparty of pleasure-makers to San Gaudenzio. They were three women andthree men. The women were in cotton frocks, one a large, dark, floridwoman in pink, the other two rather insignificant. The men I scarcelynoticed at first, except that two were young and one elderly. 

They were a queer party, even on a feast day, coming up purely forpleasure, in the morning, strange, and slightly uncertain, advancingbetween the vines. They greeted Maria and Paolo in loud, coarse voices. There was something blowsy and uncertain and hesitating about the womenin particular, which made one at once notice them. 

Then a picnic was arranged for them out of doors, on the grass. They satjust in front of the house, under the olive tree, beyond the well. Itshould have been pretty, the women in their cotton frocks, and theirfriends, sitting with wine and food in the spring sunshine. But somehowit was not: it was hard and slightly ugly. 

But since they were picnicking out of doors, we must do so too. We wereat once envious. But Maria was a little unwilling, and then she set atable for us. 

The strange party did not speak to us, they seemed slightly uneasy andangry at our presence. I asked Maria who they were. She lifted hershoulders, and, after a second's cold pause, said they were people fromdown below, and then, in her rather strident, shrill, slightly bitter, slightly derogatory voice, she added:

'They are not people for you, signore. You don't know them. '

She spoke slightly angrily and contemptuously of them, ratherprotectively of me. So that vaguely I gathered that they were not quite'respectable'. 

Only one man came into the house. He was very handsome, beautifulrather, a man of thirty-two or-three, with a clear golden skin, andperfectly turned face, something godlike. But the expression wasstrange. His hair was jet black and fine and smooth, glossy as a bird'swing, his brows were beautifully drawn, calm above his grey eyes, thathad long dark lashes. 

His eyes, however, had a sinister light in them, a pale, slightlyrepelling gleam, very much like a god's pale-gleaming eyes, with thesame vivid pallor. And all his face had the slightly malignant, suffering look of a satyr. Yet he was very beautiful. 

He walked quickly and surely, with his head rather down, passing fromhis desire to his object, absorbed, yet curiously indifferent, as if thetransit were in a strange world, as if none of what he was doing wereworth the while. Yet he did it for his own pleasure, and the light onhis face, a pale, strange gleam through his clear skin, remained like atranslucent smile, unchanging as time. 

He seemed familiar with the household, he came and fetched wine at hiswill. Maria was angry with him. She railed loudly and violently. He wasunchanged. He went out with the wine to the party on the grass. Mariaregarded them all with some hostility. 

They drank a good deal out there in the sunshine. The women and theolder man talked floridly. Il Duro crouched at the feast in his curiousfashion--he had strangely flexible loins, upon which he seemed to crouchforward. But he was separate, like an animal that remains quite single, no matter where it is. 

The party remained until about two o'clock. Then, slightly flushed, itmoved on in a ragged group up to the village beyond. I do not know ifthey went to one of the inns of the stony village, or to the largestrange house which belonged to the rich young grocer of the villagebelow, a house kept only for feasts and riots, uninhabited for the mostpart. Maria would tell me nothing about them. Only the young well-to-dogrocer, who had lived in Vienna, the Bertolotti, came later in theafternoon inquiring for the party. 

And towards sunset I saw the elderly man of the group stumbling homevery drunk down the path, after the two women, who had gone on in front. Then Paolo sent Giovanni to see the drunken one safely past thelandslip, which was dangerous. Altogether it was an unsatisfactorybusiness, very much like any other such party in any other country. 

Then in the evening Il Duro came in. His name is Faustino, but everybodyin the village has a nickname, which is almost invariably used. He camein and asked for supper. We had all eaten. So he ate a little food aloneat the table, whilst we sat round the fire. 

Afterwards we played 'Up, Jenkins'. That was the one game we played withthe peasants, except that exciting one of theirs, which consists inshouting in rapid succession your guesses at the number of fingersrapidly spread out and shut into the hands again upon the table. 

Il Duro joined in the game. And that was because he had been in America, and now was rich. He felt he could come near to the strange signori. Buthe was always inscrutable. 

It was queer to look at the hands spread on the table: the Englishwomen, having rings on their soft fingers; the large fresh hands of the elderboy, the brown paws of the younger; Paolo's distorted great hard handsof a peasant; and the big, dark brown, animal, shapely handsof Faustino. 

He had been in America first for two years and then for fiveyears--seven years altogether--but he only spoke a very little English. He was always with Italians. He had served chiefly in a flag factory, and had had very little to do save to push a trolley with flags from thedyeing-room to the drying-room I believe it was this. 

Then he had come home from America with a fair amount of money, he hadtaken his uncle's garden, had inherited his uncle's little house, and helived quite alone. 

He was rich, Maria said, shouting in her strident voice. He at oncedisclaimed it, peasant-wise. But before the signori he was glad also toappear rich. He was mean, that was more, Maria cried, half-teasing, halfgetting at him. 

He attended to his garden, grew vegetables all the year round, lived inhis little house, and in spring made good money as a vine-grafter: hewas an expert vine-grafter. 

After the boys had gone to bed he sat and talked to me. He was curiouslyattractive and curiously beautiful, but somehow like stone in his clearcolouring and his clear-cut face. His temples, with the black hair, weredistinct and fine as a work of art. 

But always his eyes had this strange, half-diabolic, half-tortured palegleam, like a goat's, and his mouth was shut almost uglily, his cheeksstern. His moustache was brown, his teeth strong and spaced. The womensaid it was a pity his moustache was brown. 

'_Peccato!--sa, per bellezza, i baffi neri--ah-h!_'

Then a long-drawn exclamation of voluptuous appreciation. 

'You live quite alone?' I said to him. 

He did. And even when he had been ill he was alone. He had been ill twoyears before. His cheeks seemed to harden like marble and to become paleat the thought. He was afraid, like marble with fear. 

'But why, ' I said, 'why do you live alone? You are sad--_è triste_. '

He looked at me with his queer, pale eyes. I felt a great static miseryin him, something very strange. 

'_Triste!_' he repeated, stiffening up, hostile. I could not understand. 

'_Vuol' dire che hai l'aria dolorosa_, ' cried Maria, like a chorusinterpreting. And there was always a sort of loud ring of challengesomewhere in her voice. 

'Sad, ' I said in English. 

'Sad I' he repeated, also in English. And he did not smile or change, only his face seemed to become more stone-like. And he only looked atme, into my eyes, with the long, pale, steady, inscrutable look of agoat, I can only repeat, something stone-like. 

'Why, ' I said, 'don't you marry? Man doesn't live alone. '

'I don't marry, ' he said to me, in his emphatic, deliberate, coldfashion, 'because I've seen too much. _Ho visto troppo. _'

'I don't understand, ' I said. 

Yet I could feel that Paolo, sitting silent, like a monolith also, inthe chimney opening, he understood: Maria also understood. 

Il Duro looked again steadily into my eyes. 

'_Ho visto troppo_, ' he repeated, and the words seemed engraved onstone. 'I've seen too much. '

'But you can marry, ' I said, 'however much you have seen, if you haveseen all the world. '

He watched me steadily, like a strange creature looking at me. 

'What woman?' he said to me. 

'You can find a woman--there are plenty of women, ' I said. 

'Not for me, ' he said. 'I have known too many. I've known too much, Ican marry nobody. '

'Do you dislike women?' I said. 

'No--quite otherwise. I don't think ill of them. '

'Then why can't you marry? Why must you live alone?'

'Why live with a woman?' he said to me, and he looked mockingly. 'Whichwoman is it to be?'

'You can find her, ' I said. 'There are many women. '

Again he shook his head in the stony, final fashion. 

'Not for me. I have known too much. '

'But does that prevent you from marrying?'

He looked at me steadily, finally. And I could see it was impossible forus to understand each other, or for me to understand him. I could notunderstand the strange white gleam of his eyes, where it came from. 

Also I knew he liked me very much, almost loved me, which again wasstrange and puzzling. It was as if he were a fairy, a faun, and had nosoul. But he gave me a feeling of vivid sadness, a sadness that gleamedlike phosphorescence. He himself was not sad. There was a completenessabout him, about the pallid otherworld he inhabited, which excludedsadness. It was too complete, too final, too defined. There was noyearning, no vague merging off into mistiness. .. . He was clear and fineas semi-transparent rock, as a substance in moonlight. He seemed like acrystal that has achieved its final shape and has nothing moreto achieve. 

That night he slept on the floor of the sitting-room. In the morning hewas gone. But a week after he came again, to graft the vines. 

All the morning and the afternoon he was among the vines, crouchingbefore them, cutting them back with his sharp, bright knife, amazinglyswift and sure, like a god. It filled me with a sort of panic to see himcrouched flexibly, like some strange animal god, doubled on hishaunches, before the young vines, and swiftly, vividly, without thought, cut, cut, cut at the young budding shoots, which fell unheeded on to theearth. Then again he strode with his curious half-goatlike movementacross the garden, to prepare the lime. 

He mixed the messy stuff, cow-dung and lime and water and earth, carefully with his hands, as if he understood that too. He was not aworker. He was a creature in intimate communion with the sensible world, knowing purely by touch the limey mess he mixed amongst, knowing as ifby relation between that soft matter and the matter of himself. 

Then again he strode over the earth, a gleaming piece of earth himself, moving to the young vines. Quickly, with a few clean cuts of the knife, he prepared the new shoot, which he had picked out of a handful whichlay beside him on the ground; he went finely to the quick of the plant, inserted the graft, then bound it up, fast, hard. 

It was like God grafting the life of man upon the body of the earth, intimately conjuring with his own flesh. 

All the while Paolo stood by, somehow excluded from the mystery, talkingto me, to Faustino. And Il Duro answered easily, as if his mind weredisengaged. It was his senses that were absorbed in the sensible life ofthe plant, and the lime and the cow-dung he handled. 

Watching him, watching his absorbed, bestial, and yet godlike crouchingbefore the plant, as if he were the god of lower life, I somehowunderstood his isolation, why he did not marry. Pan and the ministers ofPan do not marry, the sylvan gods. They are single and isolated intheir being. 

It is in the spirit that marriage takes place. In the flesh there isconnexion, but only in the spirit is there a new thing created out oftwo different antithetic things. In the body I am conjoined with thewoman. But in the spirit my conjunction with her creates a third thing, an absolute, a Word, which is neither me nor her, nor of me nor of her, but which is absolute. 

And Faustino had none of this spirit. In him sensation itself wasabsolute--not spiritual consummation, but physical sensation. So hecould not marry, it was not for him. He belonged to the god Pan, to theabsolute of the senses. 

All the while his beauty, so perfect and so defined, fascinated me, astrange static perfection about him. But his movements, whilst theyfascinated, also repelled. I can always see him crouched before thevines on his haunches, his haunches doubled together in a completeanimal unconsciousness, his face seeming in its strange golden pallorand its hardness of line, with the gleaming black of the fine hair onthe brow and temples, like something reflective, like the reflectingsurface of a stone that gleams out of the depths of night. It was likedarkness revealed in its steady, unchanging pallor. 

Again he stayed through the evening, having quarrelled once more withthe Maria about money. He quarrelled violently, yet coldly. There wassomething terrifying in it. And as soon as the matter of dispute wassettled, all trace of interest or feeling vanished from him. 

Yet he liked, above all things, to be near the English signori. Theyseemed to exercise a sort of magnetic attraction over him. It wassomething of the purely physical world, as a magnetized needle swingstowards soft iron. He was quite helpless in the relation. Only bymechanical attraction he gravitated into line with us. 

But there was nothing between us except our complete difference. It waslike night and day flowing together. 

_7_

JOHN

Besides Il Duro, we found another Italian who could speak English, thistime quite well. We had walked about four or five miles up the lake, getting higher and higher. Then quite suddenly, on the shoulder of abluff far up, we came on a village, icy cold, and as if forgotten. 

We went into the inn to drink something hot. The fire of olive stickswas burning in the open chimney, one or two men were talking at a table, a young woman with a baby stood by the fire watching something boil in alarge pot. Another woman was seen in the house-place beyond. 

In the chimney-seats sat a young mule-driver, who had left his two mulesat the door of the inn, and opposite him an elderly stout man. They gotdown and offered us the seats of honour, which we accepted withdue courtesy. 

The chimneys are like the wide, open chimney-places of old Englishcottages, but the hearth is raised about a foot and a half or two feetfrom the floor, so that the fire is almost level with the hands; andthose who sit in the chimney-seats are raised above the audience in theroom, something like two gods flanking the fire, looking out of the caveof ruddy darkness into the open, lower world of the room. 

We asked for coffee with milk and rum. The stout landlord took a seatnear us below. The comely young woman with the baby took the tincoffee-pot that stood among the grey ashes, put in fresh coffee amongthe old bottoms, filled it with water, then pushed it more intothe fire. 

The landlord turned to us with the usual naïve, curious deference, andthe usual question:

'You are Germans?'

'English. '

'Ah--_Inglesi_. '

Then there is a new note of cordiality--or so I always imagine--and therather rough, cattle-like men who are sitting with their wine round thetable look up more amicably. They do not like being intruded upon. Onlythe landlord is always affable. 

'I have a son who speaks English, ' he says: he is a handsome, courtlyold man, of the Falstaff sort. 

'Oh!'

'He has been in America. '

'And where is he now?'

'He is at home. O--Nicoletta, where is the Giovann'?'

The comely young woman with the baby came in. 

'He is with the band, ' she said. 

The old landlord looked at her with pride. 

'This is my daughter-in-law, ' he said. 

She smiled readily to the Signora. 

'And the baby?' we asked. 

'_Mio figlio_, ' cried the young woman, in the strong, penetrating voiceof these women. And she came forward to show the child to the Signora. 

It was a bonny baby: the whole company was united in adoration andservice of the bambino. There was a moment of suspension, when religioussubmission seemed to come over the inn-room. 

Then the Signora began to talk, and it broke upon the Italianchild-reverence. 

'What is he called?'

'Oscare, ' came the ringing note of pride. And the mother talked to thebaby in dialect. All, men and women alike, felt themselves glorified bythe presence of the child. 

At last the coffee in the tin coffee-pot was boiling and frothing out ofspout and lid. The milk in the little copper pan was also hot, among theashes. So we had our drink at last. 

The landlord was anxious for us to see Giovanni, his son. There was avillage band performing up the street, in front of the house of acolonel who had come home wounded from Tripoli. Everybody in the villagewas wildly proud about the colonel and about the brass band, the musicof which was execrable. 

We just looked into the street. The band of uncouth fellows was playingthe same tune over and over again before a desolate, newish house. Acrowd of desolate, forgotten villagers stood round in the cold upperair. It seemed altogether that the place was forgotten by God and man. 

But the landlord, burly, courteous, handsome, pointed out with aflourish the Giovanni, standing in the band playing a cornet. The banditself consisted only of five men, rather like beggars in the street. But Giovanni was the strangest! He was tall and thin and somewhatGerman-looking, wearing shabby American clothes and a very high doublecollar and a small American crush hat. He looked entirely like ane'er-do-well who plays a violin in the street, dressed in the mostdown-at-heel, sordid respectability. 

'That is he--you see, Signore--the young one under the balcony. '

The father spoke with love and pride, and the father was a gentleman, like Falstaff, a pure gentleman. The daughter-in-law also peered out tolook at Il Giovann', who was evidently a figure of repute, in hissordid, degenerate American respectability. Meanwhile, this figure ofrepute blew himself red in the face, producing staccato strains on hiscornet. And the crowd stood desolate and forsaken in the cold, upperafternoon. 

Then there was a sudden rugged '_Evviva, Evviva_!' from the people, theband stopped playing, somebody valiantly broke into a line of the song:

 _Tripoli, sarà italiana, Sarà italiana al rombo del cannon'. _

The colonel had appeared on the balcony, a smallish man, very yellow inthe face, with grizzled black hair and very shabby legs. They all seemedso sordidly, hopelessly shabby. 

He suddenly began to speak, leaning forward, hot and feverish andyellow, upon the iron rail of the balcony. There was something hot andmarshy and sick about him, slightly repulsive, less than human. He toldhis fellow-villagers how he loved them, how, when he lay uncovered onthe sands of Tripoli, week after week, he had known they were watchinghim from the Alpine height of the village, he could feel that where hewas they were all looking. When the Arabs came rushing like things gonemad, and he had received his wound, he had known that in his ownvillage, among his own dear ones, there was recovery. Love would healthe wounds, the home country was a lover who would heal all her sons'wounds with love. 

Among the grey desolate crowd were sharp, rending 'Bravos!'--the peoplewere in tears--the landlord at my side was repeating softly, abstractedly: '_Caro--caro--Ettore, caro colonello_--' and when it wasfinished, and the little colonel with shabby, humiliated legs was gonein, he turned to me and said, with challenge that almost frightened me:

'_Un brav' uomo_. '

'_Bravissimo_, ' I said. 

Then we, too, went indoors. 

It was all, somehow, grey and hopeless and acrid, unendurable. 

The colonel, poor devil--we knew him afterwards--is now dead. It isstrange that he is dead. There is something repulsive to me in thethought of his lying dead: such a humiliating, somehow degraded corpse. Death has no beauty in Italy, unless it be violent. The death of man orwoman through sickness is an occasion of horror, repulsive. They belongentirely to life, they are so limited to life, these people. 

Soon the Giovanni came home, and took his cornet upstairs. Then he cameto see us. He was an ingenuous youth, sordidly shabby and dirty. Hisfair hair was long and uneven, his very high starched collar made oneaware that his neck and his ears were not clean, his American crimsontie was ugly, his clothes looked as if they had been kicking about onthe floor for a year. 

Yet his blue eyes were warm and his manner and speech very gentle. 

'You will speak English with us, ' I said. 

'Oh, ' he said, smiling and shaking his head, 'I could speak English verywell. But it is two years that I don't speak it now, over two years now, so I don't speak it. '

'But you speak it very well. '

'No. It is two years that I have not spoke, not a word--so, you see, Ihave--'

'You have forgotten it? No, you haven't. It will quickly come back. '

'If I hear it--when I go to America--then I shall--I shall--'

'You will soon pick it up. '

'Yes--I shall pick it up. '

The landlord, who had been watching with pride, now went away. The wifealso went away, and we were left with the shy, gentle, dirty, andfrowsily-dressed Giovanni. 

He laughed in his sensitive, quick fashion. 

'The women in America, when they came into the store, they said, "Whereis John, where is John?" Yes, they liked me. '

And he laughed again, glancing with vague, warm blue eyes, very shy, very coiled upon himself with sensitiveness. 

He had managed a store in America, in a smallish town. I glanced at hisreddish, smooth, rather knuckly hands, and thin wrists in the frayedcuff. They were real shopman's hands. 

The landlord brought some special feast-day cake, so overjoyed he was tohave his Giovanni speaking English with the Signoria. 

When we went away, we asked 'John' to come down to our villa to see us. We scarcely expected him to turn up. 

Yet one morning he appeared, at about half past nine, just as we werefinishing breakfast. It was sunny and warm and beautiful, so we askedhim please to come with us picnicking. 

He was a queer shoot, again, in his unkempt longish hair and slovenlyclothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel American in appearance. Andhe was transported with shyness. Yet ours was the world he had chosen ashis own, so he took his place bravely and simply, a hanger-on. 

We climbed up the water-course in the mountain-side, up to a smoothlittle lawn under the olive trees, where daisies were flowering andgladioli were in bud. It was a tiny little lawn of grass in a levelcrevice, and sitting there we had the world below us--the lake, thedistant island, the far-off low Verona shore. 

Then 'John' began to talk, and he talked continuously, like a foreigner, not saying the things he would have said in Italian, but following thesuggestion and scope of his limited English. 

In the first place, he loved his father--it was 'my father, my father'always. His father had a little shop as well as the inn in the villageabove. So John had had some education. He had been sent to Brescia andthen to Verona to school, and there had taken his examinations to becomea civil engineer. He was clever, and could pass his examinations. But henever finished his course. His mother died, and his father, disconsolate, had wanted him at home. Then he had gone back, when he wassixteen or seventeen, to the village beyond the lake, to be with hisfather and to look after the shop. 

'But didn't you mind giving up all your work?' I said. 

He did not quite understand. 

'My father wanted me to come back, ' he said. 

It was evident that Giovanni had had no definite conception of what hewas doing or what he wanted to do. His father, wishing to make agentleman of him, had sent him to school in Verona. By accident he hadbeen moved on into the engineering course. When it all fizzled to anend, and he returned half-baked to the remote, desolate village of themountain-side, he was not disappointed or chagrined. He had neverconceived of a coherent purposive life. Either one stayed in thevillage, like a lodged stone, or one made random excursions into theworld, across the world. It was all aimless and purposeless. 

So he had stayed a while with his father, then he had gone, just asaimlessly, with a party of men who were emigrating to America. He hadtaken some money, had drifted about, living in the most comfortless, wretched fashion, then he had found a place somewhere in Pennsylvania, in a dry goods store. This was when he was seventeen or eighteenyears old. 

All this seemed to have happened to him without his being very muchaffected, at least consciously. His nature was simple and self-complete. Yet not so self-complete as that of Il Duro or Paolo. They had passedthrough the foreign world and been quite untouched. Their souls werestatic, it was the world that had flowed unstable by. 

But John was more sensitive, he had come more into contact with his newsurroundings. He had attended night classes almost every evening, andhad been taught English like a child. He had loved the American freeschool, the teachers, the work. 

But he had suffered very much in America. With his curious, over-sensitive, wincing laugh, he told us how the boys had followed himand jeered at him, calling after him, 'You damn Dago, you damn Dago. 'They had stopped him and his friend in the street and taken away theirhats, and spat into them. So that at last he had gone mad. They wereyouths and men who always tortured him, using bad language whichstartled us very much as he repeated it, there on the little lawn underthe olive trees, above the perfect lake: English obscenities and abuseso coarse and startling that we bit our lips, shocked almost intolaughter, whilst John, simple and natural, and somehow, for all his longhair and dirty appearance, flower-like in soul, repeated to us thesethings which may never be repeated in decent company. 

'Oh, ' he said, 'at last, I get mad. When they come one day, shouting, "You damn Dago, dirty dog, " and will take my hat again, oh, I get mad, and I would kill them, I would kill them, I am so mad. I run to them, and throw one to the floor, and I tread on him while I go upon another, the biggest. Though they hit me and kick me all over, I feel nothing, Iam mad. I throw the biggest to the floor, a man; he is older than I am, and I hit him so hard I would kill him. When the others see it they areafraid, they throw stones and hit me on the face. But I don't feel it--Idon't know nothing. I hit the man on the floor, I almost kill him. Iforget everything except I will kill him--'

'But you didn't?'

'No--I don't know--' and he laughed his queer, shaken laugh. 'The otherman that was with me, my friend, he came to me and we went away. Oh, Iwas mad. I was completely mad. I would have killed them. '

He was trembling slightly, and his eyes were dilated with a strangegreyish-blue fire that was very painful and elemental. He looked besidehimself. But he was by no means mad. 

We were shaken by the vivid, lambent excitement of the youth, we wishedhim to forget. We were shocked, too, in our souls to see the pureelemental flame shaken out of his gentle, sensitive nature. By hisslight, crinkled laugh we could see how much he had suffered. He hadgone out and faced the world, and he had kept his place, stranger andDago though he was. 

'They never came after me no more, not all the while I was there. '

Then he said he became the foreman in the store--at first he was onlyassistant. It was the best store in the town, and many English ladiescame, and some Germans. He liked the English ladies very much: theyalways wanted him to be in the store. He wore white clothes there, andthey would say:

'You look very nice in the white coat, John'; or else:

'Let John come, he can find it'; or else they said:

'John speaks like a born American. '

This pleased him very much. 

In the end, he said, he earned a hundred dollars a month. He lived withthe extraordinary frugality of the Italians, and had quite a lotof money. 

He was not like Il Duro. Faustino had lived in a state of miserlinessalmost in America, but then he had had his debauches of shows and wineand carousals. John went chiefly to the schools, in one of which he waseven asked to teach Italian. His knowledge of his own language wasremarkable and most unusual!

'But what, ' I asked, 'brought you back?'

'It was my father. You see, if I did not come to have my militaryservice, I must stay till I am forty. So I think perhaps my father willbe dead, I shall never see him. So I came. '

He had come home when he was twenty to fulfil his military duties. Athome he had married. He was very fond of his wife, but he had noconception of love in the old sense. His wife was like the past, towhich he was wedded. Out of her he begot his child, as out of the past. But the future was all beyond her, apart from her. He was going awayagain, now, to America. He had been some nine months at home after hismilitary service was over. He had no more to do. Now he was leaving hiswife and child and his father to go to America. 

'But why, ' I said, 'why? You are not poor, you can manage the shop inyour village. '

'Yes, ' he said. 'But I will go to America. Perhaps I shall go into thestore again, the same. '

'But is it not just the same as managing the shop at home?'

'No--no--it is quite different. '

Then he told us how he bought goods in Brescia and in Said for the shopat home, how he had rigged up a funicular with the assistance of thevillage, an overhead wire by which you could haul the goods up the faceof the cliffs right high up, to within a mile of the village. He wasvery proud of this. And sometimes he himself went down the funicular tothe water's edge, to the boat, when he was in a hurry. This alsopleased him. 

But he was going to Brescia this day to see about going again toAmerica. Perhaps in another month he would be gone. 

It was a great puzzle to me why he would go. He could not say himself. He would stay four or five years, then he would come home again to seehis father--and his wife and child. 

There was a strange, almost frightening destiny upon him, which seemedto take him away, always away from home, from the past, to that great, raw America. He seemed scarcely like a person with individual choice, more like a creature under the influence of fate which wasdisintegrating the old life and precipitating him, a fragmentinconclusive, into the new chaos. 

He submitted to it all with a perfect unquestioning simplicity, nevereven knowing that he suffered, that he must suffer disintegration fromthe old life. He was moved entirely from within, he never questioned hisinevitable impulse. 

'They say to me, "Don't go--don't go"--' he shook his head. 'But I say Iwill go. '

And at that it was finished. 

So we saw him off at the little quay, going down the lake. He wouldreturn at evening, and be pulled up in his funicular basket. And in amonth's time he would be standing on the same lake steamer goingto America. 

Nothing was more painful than to see him standing there in his degraded, sordid American clothes, on the deck of the steamer, waving us good-bye, belonging in his final desire to our world, the world of consciousnessand deliberate action. With his candid, open, unquestioning face, heseemed like a prisoner being conveyed from one form of life to another, or like a soul in trajectory, that has not yet found a resting-place. 

What were wife and child to him?--they were the last steps of the past. His father was the continent behind him; his wife and child theforeshore of the past; but his face was set outwards, away from itall--whither, neither he nor anybody knew, but he called it America. 

_Italians in Exile_

When I was in Constance the weather was misty and enervating anddepressing, it was no pleasure to travel on the big flat desolate lake. 

When I went from Constance, it was on a small steamer down the Rhine toSchaffhausen. That was beautiful. Still, the mist hung over the waters, over the wide shallows of the river, and the sun, coming through themorning, made lovely yellow lights beneath the bluish haze, so that itseemed like the beginning of the world. And there was a hawk in theupper air fighting with two crows, or two rooks. Ever they rose higherand higher, the crow flickering above the attacking hawk, the fightgoing on like some strange symbol in the sky, the Germans on deckwatching with pleasure. 

Then we passed out of sight between wooded banks and under bridges wherequaint villages of old romance piled their red and coloured pointedroofs beside the water, very still, remote, lost in the vagueness of thepast. It could not be that they were real. Even when the boat put in toshore, and the customs officials came to look, the village remainedremote in the romantic past of High Germany, the Germany of fairy talesand minstrels and craftsmen. The poignancy of the past was almostunbearable, floating there in colour upon the haze of the river. 

We went by some swimmers, whose white shadowy bodies trembled near theside of the steamer under water. One man with a round, fair head liftedhis face and one arm from the water and shouted a greeting to us, as ifhe were a Niebelung, saluting with bright arm lifted from the water, hisface laughing, the fair moustache hanging over his mouth. Then his whitebody swirled in the water, and he was gone, swimming with theside stroke. 

Schaffhausen the town, half old and bygone, half modern, with breweriesand industries, that is not very real. Schaffhausen Falls, with theirfactory in the midst and their hotel at the bottom, and the generalcinematograph effect, they are ugly. 

It was afternoon when I set out to walk from the Falls to Italy, acrossSwitzerland. I remember the big, fat, rather gloomy fields of this partof Baden, damp and unliving. I remember I found some apples under a treein a field near a railway embankment, then some mushrooms, and I ateboth. Then I came on to a long, desolate high-road, with dreary, withered trees on either side, and flanked by great fields where groupsof men and women were working. They looked at me as I went by down thelong, long road, alone and exposed and out of the world. 

I remember nobody came at the border village to examine my pack, Ipassed through unchallenged. All was quiet and lifeless and hopeless, with big stretches of heavy land. 

Till sunset came, very red and purple, and suddenly, from the heavyspacious open land I dropped sharply into the Rhine valley again, suddenly, as if into another glamorous world. 

There was the river rushing along between its high, mysterious, romanticbanks, which were high as hills, and covered with vine. And there wasthe village of tall, quaint houses flickering its lights on to thedeep-flowing river, and quite silent, save for the rushing of water. 

There was a fine covered bridge, very dark. I went to the middle andlooked through the opening at the dark water below, at the façade ofsquare lights, the tall village-front towering remote and silent abovethe river. The hill rose on either side the flood; down here was asmall, forgotten, wonderful world that belonged to the date of isolatedvillage communities and wandering minstrels. 

So I went back to the inn of The Golden Stag, and, climbing some steps, I made a loud noise. A woman came, and I asked for food. She led methrough a room where were enormous barrels, ten feet in diameter, lyingfatly on their sides; then through a large stone-clean kitchen, withbright pans, ancient as the Meistersinger; then up some steps and intothe long guest-room, where a few tables were laid for supper. 

A few people were eating. I asked for Abendessen, and sat by the windowlooking at the darkness of the river below, the covered bridge, the darkhill opposite, crested with its few lights. 

Then I ate a very large quantity of knoedel soup and bread, and drankbeer, and was very sleepy. Only one or two village men came in, andthese soon went again; the place was dead still. Only at a long table onthe opposite side of the room were seated seven or eight men, ragged, disreputable, some impudent--another came in late; the landlady gavethem all thick soup with dumplings and bread and meat, serving them in asort of brief disapprobation. They sat at the long table, eight or ninetramps and beggars and wanderers out of work and they ate with a sort ofcheerful callousness and brutality for the most part, and as ifravenously, looking round and grinning sometimes, subdued, cowed, likeprisoners, and yet impudent. At the end one shouted to know where he wasto sleep. The landlady called to the young serving-woman, and in aclassic German severity of disapprobation they were led up the stonestairs to their room. They tramped off in threes and twos, making a bad, mean, humiliated exit. It was not yet eight o'clock. The landlady sattalking to one bearded man, staid and severe, whilst, with her work onthe table, she sewed steadily. 

As the beggars and wanderers went slinking out of the room, some calledimpudently, cheerfully:

'_Nacht, Frau Wirtin--G'Nacht, Wirtin--'te Nacht, Frau_, ' to all ofwhich the hostess answered a stereotyped '_Gute Nacht_, ' never turningher head from her sewing, or indicating by the faintest movement thatshe was addressing the men who were filing raggedly to the doorway. 

So the room was empty, save for the landlady and her sewing, the staid, elderly villager to whom she was talking in the unbeautiful dialect, andthe young serving-woman who was clearing away the plates and basins ofthe tramps and beggars. 

Then the villager also went. 

'_Gute Nacht, Frau Seidl_, ' to the landlady; '_Gute Nacht_, ' at random, to me. 

So I looked at the newspaper. Then I asked the landlady for a cigarette, not knowing how else to begin. So she came to my table, and we talked. 

It pleased me to take upon myself a sort of romantic, wanderingcharacter; she said my German was '_schön_'; a little goes a long way. 

So I asked her who were the men who had sat at the long table. Shebecame rather stiff and curt. 

'They are the men looking for work, ' she said, as if the subject weredisagreeable. 

'But why do they come here, so many?' I asked. 

Then she told me that they were going out of the country: this wasalmost the last village of the border: that the relieving officer ineach village was empowered to give to every vagrant a ticket entitlingthe holder to an evening meal, bed, and bread in the morning, at acertain inn. This was the inn for the vagrants coming to this village. The landlady received fourpence per head, I believe it was, for each ofthese wanderers. 

'Little enough, ' I said. 

'Nothing, ' she replied. 

She did not like the subject at all. Only her respect for me made heranswer. 

'_Bettler, Lumpen, und Taugenichtse!_' I said cheerfully. 

'And men who are out of work, and are going back to their own parish, 'she said stiffly. 

So we talked a little, and I too went to bed. 

'_Gute Nacht, Frau Wirtin. _'

'_Gute Nacht, mein Herr. _'

So I went up more and more stone stairs, attended by the young woman. Itwas a great, lofty, old deserted house, with many drab doors. 

At last, in the distant topmost floor, I had my bedroom, with two bedsand bare floor and scant furniture. I looked down at the river farbelow, at the covered bridge, at the far lights on the hill above, opposite. Strange to be here in this lost, forgotten place, sleepingunder the roof with tramps and beggars. I debated whether they wouldsteal my boots if I put them out. But I risked it. The door-latch made aloud noise on the deserted landing, everywhere felt abandoned, forgotten. I wondered where the eight tramps and beggars were asleep. There was no way of securing the door. But somehow I felt that, if Iwere destined to be robbed or murdered, it would not be by tramps andbeggars. So I blew out the candle and lay under the big feather bed, listening to the running and whispering of the medieval Rhine. 

And when I waked up again it was sunny, it was morning on the hillopposite, though the river deep below ran in shadow. 

The tramps and beggars were all gone: they must be cleared out by seveno'clock in the morning. So I had the inn to myself, I, and the landlady, and the serving-woman. Everywhere was very clean, full of the Germanmorning energy and brightness, which is so different from the Latinmorning. The Italians are dead and torpid first thing, the Germans areenergetic and cheerful. 

It was cheerful in the sunny morning, looking down on the swift river, the covered, picturesque bridge, the bank and the hill opposite. Thendown the curving road of the facing hill the Swiss cavalry came riding, men in blue uniforms. I went out to watch them. They came thunderingromantically through the dark cavern of the roofed-in bridge, and theydismounted at the entrance to the village. There was a freshmorning-cheerful newness everywhere, in the arrival of the troops, inthe welcome of the villagers. 

The Swiss do not look very military, neither in accoutrement norbearing. This little squad of cavalry seemed more like a party of commonmen riding out in some business of their own than like an army. Theywere very republican and very free. The officer who commanded them wasone of themselves, his authority was by consent. 

It was all very pleasant and genuine; there was a sense of ease andpeacefulness, quite different from the mechanical, slightly sullenmanoeuvring of the Germans. 

The village baker and his assistant came hot and floury from thebakehouse, bearing between them a great basket of fresh bread. Thecavalry were all dismounted by the bridge-head, eating and drinking likebusiness men. Villagers came to greet their friends: one soldier kissedhis father, who came wearing a leathern apron. The school belltang-tang-tanged from above, school children merged timidly through thegrouped horses, up the narrow street, passing unwillingly with theirbooks. The river ran swiftly, the soldiers, very haphazard and slack inuniform, real shack-bags, chewed their bread in large mouthfuls; theyoung lieutenant, who seemed to be an officer only by consent of themen, stood apart by the bridge-head, gravely. They were all serious andself-contented, very unglamorous. It was like a business excursion onhorseback, harmless and uninspiring. The uniforms were almost ludicrous, so ill-fitting and casual. 

So I shouldered my own pack and set off, through the bridge over theRhine, and up the hill opposite. 

There is something very dead about this country. I remember I pickedapples from the grass by the roadside, and some were very sweet. But forthe rest, there was mile after mile of dead, uninspiredcountry--uninspired, so neutral and ordinary that it was almostdestructive. 

One gets this feeling always in Switzerland, except high up: thisfeeling of average, of utter soulless ordinariness, somethingintolerable. Mile after mile, to Zurich, it was just the same. It wasjust the same in the tram-car going into Zurich; it was just the same inthe town, in the shops, in the restaurant. All was the utmost level ofordinariness and well-being, but so ordinary that it was like a blight. All the picturesqueness of the town is nothing, it is like a mostordinary, average, usual person in an old costume. The place wassoul-killing. 

So after two hours' rest, eating in a restaurant, wandering by the quayand through the market, and sitting on a seat by the lake, I found asteamer that would take me away. That is how I always feel inSwitzerland: the only possible living sensation is the sensation ofrelief in going away, always going away. The horrible averageordinariness of it all, something utterly without flower or soul ortranscendence, the horrible vigorous ordinariness, is too much. 

So I went on a steamer down the long lake, surrounded by low grey hills. It was Saturday afternoon. A thin rain came on. I thought I would ratherbe in fiery Hell than in this dead level of average life. 

I landed somewhere on the right bank, about three-quarters of the waydown the lake. It was almost dark. Yet I must walk away. I climbed along hill from the lake, came to the crest, looked down the darkness ofthe valley, and descended into the deep gloom, down into asoulless village. 

But it was eight o'clock, and I had had enough. One might as well sleep. I found the Gasthaus zur Post. 

It was a small, very rough inn, having only one common room, with baretables, and a short, stout, grim, rather surly landlady, and a landlordwhose hair stood up on end, and who was trembling on the edge ofdelirium tremens. 

They could only give me boiled ham: so I ate boiled ham and drank beer, and tried to digest the utter cold materialism of Switzerland. 

As I sat with my back to the wall, staring blankly at the tremblinglandlord, who was ready at any moment to foam at the mouth, and at thedour landlady, who was quite capable of keeping him in order, there camein one of those dark, showy Italian girls with a man. She wore a blouseand skirt, and no hat. Her hair was perfectly dressed. It was reallyItaly. The man was soft, dark, he would get stout later, _trapu_, hewould have somewhat the figure of Caruso. But as yet he was soft, sensuous, young, handsome. 

They sat at the long side-table with their beer, and created anothercountry at once within the room. Another Italian came, fair and fat andslow, one from the Venetian province; then another, a little thin youngman, who might have been a Swiss save for his vivid movement. 

This last was the first to speak to the Germans. The others had justsaid '_Bier. _' But the little newcomer entered into a conversation withthe landlady. 

At last there were six Italians sitting talking loudly and warmly at theside-table. The slow, cold German-Swiss at the other tables looked atthem occasionally. The landlord, with his crazed, stretched eyes, glaredat them with hatred. But they fetched their beer from the bar with easyfamiliarity, and sat at their table, creating a bonfire of life in thecallousness of the inn. 

At last they finished their beer and trooped off down the passage. Theroom was painfully empty. I did not know what to do. 

Then I heard the landlord yelling and screeching and snarling from thekitchen at the back, for all the world like a mad dog. But the SwissSaturday evening customers at the other tables smoked on and talked intheir ugly dialect, without trouble. Then the landlady came in, and soonafter the landlord, he collarless, with his waistcoat unbuttoned, showing his loose throat, and accentuating his round pot-belly. Hislimbs were thin and feverish, the skin of his face hung loose, his eyesglaring, his hands trembled. Then he sat down to talk to a crony. Histerrible appearance was a fiasco; nobody heeded him at all, only thelandlady was surly. 

From the back came loud noises of pleasure and excitement and bangingabout. When the room door was opened I could see down the dark passageopposite another lighted door. Then the fat, fair Italian came in formore beer. 

'What is all the noise?' I asked the landlady at last. 

'It is the Italians, ' she said. 

'What are they doing?'

'They are doing a play. '

'Where?'

She jerked her head: 'In the room at the back. '

'Can I go and look at them?'

'I should think so. '

The landlord glaringly watched me go out. I went down the stone passageand found a great, half-lighted room that might be used to holdmeetings, with forms piled at the side. At one end was raised platformor stage. And on this stage was a table and a lamp, and the Italiansgrouped round the light, gesticulating and laughing. Their beer mugswere on the table and on the floor of the stage; the little sharp youthwas intently looking over some papers, the others were bending over thetable with him. 

They looked up as I entered from the distance, looked at me in thedistant twilight of the dusky room, as if I were an intruder, as if Ishould go away when I had seen them. But I said in German:

'May I look?'

They were still unwilling to see or to hear me. 

'What do you say?' the small one asked in reply. 

The others stood and watched, slightly at bay, like suspicious animals. 

'If I might come and look, ' I said in German; then, feeling veryuncomfortable, in Italian: 'You are doing a drama, the landladytold me. '

The big empty room was behind me, dark, the little company of Italiansstood above me in the light of the lamp which was on the table. They allwatched with unseeing, unwilling looks: I was merely an intrusion. 

'We are only learning it, ' said the small youth. 

They wanted me to go away. But I wanted to stay. 

'May I listen?' I said. 'I don't want to stay in there. ' And Iindicated, with a movement of the head, the inn-room beyond. 

'Yes, ' said the young intelligent man. 'But we are only reading ourparts. '

They had all become more friendly to me, they accepted me. 

'You are a German?' asked one youth. 

'No--English. '

'English? But do you live in Switzerland?'

'No--I am walking to Italy. '

'On foot?'

They looked with wakened eyes. 

'Yes. '

So I told them about my journey. They were puzzled. They did not quiteunderstand why I wanted to walk. But they were delighted with the ideaof going to Lugano and Como and then to Milan. 

'Where do you come from?' I asked them. 

They were all from the villages between Verona and Venice. They had seenthe Garda. I told them of my living there. 

'Those peasants of the mountains, ' they said at once, 'they are peopleof little education. Rather wild folk. '

And they spoke with good-humoured contempt. 

I thought of Paolo, and Il Duro, and the Signor Pietro, our padrone, andI resented these factory-hands for criticizing them. 

So I sat on the edge of the stage whilst they rehearsed their parts. Thelittle thin intelligent fellow, Giuseppino, was the leader. The othersread their parts in the laborious, disjointed fashion of the peasant, who can only see one word at a time, and has then to put the wordstogether, afterwards, to make sense. The play was an amateur melodrama, printed in little penny booklets, for carnival production. This was onlythe second reading they had given it, and the handsome, dark fellow, whowas roused and displaying himself before the girl, a hard, erect pieceof callousness, laughed and flushed and stumbled, and understood nothingtill it was transferred into him direct through Giuseppino. The fat, fair, slow man was more conscientious. He laboured through his part. Theother two men were in the background more or less. 

The most confidential was the fat, fair, slow man, who was calledAlberto. His part was not very important, so he could sit by me andtalk to me. 

He said they were all workers in the factory--silk, I think it was--inthe village. They were a whole colony of Italians, thirty or morefamilies. They had all come at different times. 

Giuseppino had been longest in the village. He had come when he waseleven, with his parents, and had attended the Swiss school. So he spokeperfect German. He was a clever man, was married, and had two children. 

He himself, Alberto, had been seven years in the valley; the girl, laMaddelena, had been here ten years; the dark man, Alfredo, who wasflushed with excitement of her, had been in the village about nineyears--he alone of all men was not married. 

The others had all married Italian wives, and they lived in the greatdwelling whose windows shone yellow by the rattling factory. They livedentirely among themselves; none of them could speak German, more than afew words, except the Giuseppino, who was like a native here. 

It was very strange being among these Italians exiled in Switzerland. Alfredo, the dark one, the unmarried, was in the old tradition. Yet evenhe was curiously subject to a new purpose, as if there were some greaternew will that included him, sensuous, mindless as he was. He seemed togive his consent to something beyond himself. In this he was differentfrom Il Duro, in that he had put himself under the control of theoutside conception. 

It was strange to watch them on the stage, the Italians all lambent, soft, warm, sensuous, yet moving subject round Giuseppino, who wasalways quiet, always ready, always impersonal. There was a look ofpurpose, almost of devotion on his face, that singled him out and madehim seem the one stable, eternal being among them. They quarrelled, andhe let them quarrel up to a certain point; then he called them back. Helet them do as they liked so long as they adhered more or less to thecentral purpose, so long as they got on in some measure with the play. 

All the while they were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. TheAlberto was barman: he went out continually with the glasses. TheMaddelena had a small glass. In the lamplight of the stage the littleparty read and smoked and practised, exposed to the empty darkness ofthe big room. Queer and isolated it seemed, a tiny, pathetic magiclandfar away from the barrenness of Switzerland. I could believe in the oldfairy-tales where, when the rock was opened, a magic underworldwas revealed. 

The Alfredo, flushed, roused, handsome, but very soft and enveloping inhis heat, laughed and threw himself into his pose, laughed foolishly, and then gave himself up to his part. The Alberto, slow and laborious, yet with a spark of vividness and natural intensity flashing through, replied and gesticulated; the Maddelena laid her head on the bosom ofAlfredo, the other men started into action, and the play proceededintently for half an hour. 

Quick, vivid, and sharp, the little Giuseppino was always central. Buthe seemed almost invisible. When I think back, I can scarcely see him, Ican only see the others, the lamplight on their faces and on their fullgesticulating limbs. I can see--the Maddelena, rather coarse and hardand repellent, declaiming her words in a loud, half-cynical voice, falling on the breast of the Alfredo, who was soft and sensuous, morelike a female, flushing, with his mouth getting wet, his eyes moist, ashe was roused. I can see the Alberto, slow, laboured, yet with a kind ofpristine simplicity in all his movements, that touched his fatcommonplaceness with beauty. Then there were the two other men, shy, inflammable, unintelligent, with their sudden Italian rushes of hotfeeling. All their faces are distinct in the lamplight, all their bodiesate palpable and dramatic. 

But the face of the Giuseppino is like a pale luminousness, a sort ofgleam among all the ruddy glow, his body is evanescent, like a shadow. And his being seemed to cast its influence over all the others, exceptperhaps the woman, who was hard and resistant. The other men seemed allovercast, mitigated, in part transfigured by the will of the littleleader. But they were very soft stuff, if inflammable. 

The young woman of the inn, niece of the landlady, came down and calledout across the room. 

'We will go away from here now, ' said the Giuseppino to me. 'They closeat eleven. But we have another inn in the next parish that is open allnight. Come with us and drink some wine. '

'But, ' I said, 'you would rather be alone. '

No; they pressed me to go, they wanted me to go with them, they wereeager, they wanted to entertain me. Alfredo, flushed, wet-mouthed, warm, protested I must drink wine, the real Italian red wine, from their ownvillage at home. They would have no nay. 

So I told the landlady. She said I must be back by twelve o'clock. 

The night was very dark. Below the road the stream was rushing; therewas a great factory on the other side of the water, making faintquivering lights of reflection, and one could see the working ofmachinery shadowy through the lighted windows. Near by was the talltenement where the Italians lived. 

We went on through the straggling, raw village, deep beside the stream, then over the small bridge, and up the steep hill down which I had comeearlier in the evening. 

So we arrived at the café. It was so different inside from the Germaninn, yet it was not like an Italian café either. It was brilliantlylighted, clean, new, and there were red-and-white cloths on the tables. The host was in the room, and his daughter, a beautiful red-haired girl. 

Greetings were exchanged with the quick, intimate directness of Italy. But there was another note also, a faint echo of reserve, as though theyreserved themselves from the outer world, making a special innercommunity. 

Alfredo was hot: he took off his coat. We all sat freely at a longtable, whilst the red-haired girl brought a quart of red wine. At othertables men were playing cards, with the odd Neapolitan cards. They toowere talking Italian. It was a warm, ruddy bit of Italy within the colddarkness of Switzerland. 

'When you come to Italy, ' they said to me, 'salute it from us, salutethe sun, and the earth, _l'Italia_. '

So we drank in salute of Italy. They sent their greeting by me. 

'You know in Italy there is the sun, the sun, ' said Alfredo to me, profoundly moved, wet-mouthed, tipsy. 

I was reminded of Enrico Persevalli and his terrifying cry at the end of_Ghosts_:

'_Il sole, il sole!_'

So we talked for a while of Italy. They had a pained tenderness for it, sad, reserved. 

'Don't you want to go back?' I said, pressing them to tell medefinitely. 'Won't you go back some time?'

'Yes, ' they said, 'we will go back. '

But they spoke reservedly, without freedom. We talked about Italy, aboutsongs, and Carnival; about the food, polenta, and salt. They laughed atmy pretending to cut the slabs of polenta with a string: that rejoicedthem all: it took them back to the Italian mezzo-giorno, the bellsjangling in the campanile, the eating after the heavy work on the land. 

But they laughed with the slight pain and contempt and fondness whichevery man feels towards his past, when he has struggled away from thatpast, from the conditions which made it. 

They loved Italy passionately; but they would not go back. All theirblood, all their senses were Italian, needed the Italian sky, thespeech, the sensuous life. They could hardly live except through thesenses. Their minds were not developed, mentally they were children, lovable, naïve, almost fragile children. But sensually they were men:sensually they were accomplished. 

Yet a new tiny flower was struggling to open in them, the flower of anew spirit. The substratum of Italy has always been pagan, sensuous, themost potent symbol the sexual symbol. The child is really anon-Christian symbol: it is the symbol of mans's triumph of eternal lifein procreation. The worship of the Cross never really held good inItaly. The Christianity of Northern Europe has never had anyplace there. 

And now, when Northern Europe is turning back on its own Christianity, denying it all, the Italians are struggling with might and main againstthe sensuous spirit which still dominates them. When Northern Europe, whether it hates Nietzsche or not, is crying out for the Dionysicecstasy, practising on itself the Dionysic ecstasy, Southern Europe isbreaking free from Dionysus, from the triumphal affirmation of life overdeath, immortality through procreation. 

I could see these sons of Italy would never go back. Men like Paolo andIl Duro broke away only to return. The dominance of the old form was toostrong for them. Call it love of country or love of the village, campanilismo, or what not, it was the dominance of the old pagan form, the old affirmation of immortality through procreation, as opposed tothe Christian affirmation of immortality through self-death andsocial love. 

But 'John' and these Italians in Switzerland were a generation younger, and they would not go back, at least not to the old Italy. Suffer asthey might, and they did suffer, wincing in every nerve and fibre fromthe cold material insentience of the northern countries and of America, still they would endure this for the sake of something else they wanted. They would suffer a death in the flesh, as 'John' had suffered infighting the street crowd, as these men suffered year after year crampedin their black gloomy cold Swiss valley, working in the factory. Butthere would come a new spirit out of it. 

Even Alfredo was submitted to the new process; though he belongedentirely by nature to the sort of Il Duro, he was purely sensuous andmindless. But under the influence of Giuseppino he was thrown down, asfallow to the new spirit that would come. 

And then, when the others were all partially tipsy, the Giuseppino beganto talk to me. In him was a steady flame burning, burning, burning, aflame of the mind, of the spirit, something new and clear, somethingthat held even the soft, sensuous Alfredo in submission, besides all theothers, who had some little development of mind. 

'_Sa signore_, ' said the Giuseppino to me, quiet, almost invisible orinaudible, as it seemed, like a spirit addressing me, '_l'uomo non hapatria_--a man has no country. What has the Italian Government to dowith us. What does a Government mean? It makes us work, it takes part ofour wages away from us, it makes us soldiers--and what for? What isgovernment for?'

'Have you been a soldier?' I interrupted him. 

He had not, none of them had: that was why they could not really go backto Italy. Now this was out; this explained partly their curiousreservation in speaking about their beloved country. They had forfeitedparents as well as homeland. 

'What does the Government do? It takes taxes; it has an army and police, and it makes roads. But we could do without an army, and we could be ourown police, and we could make our own roads. What is this Government?Who wants it? Only those who are unjust, and want to have advantage oversomebody else. It is an instrument of injustice and of wrong. 

'Why should we have a Government? Here, in this village, there arethirty families of Italians. There is no government for them, no ItalianGovernment. And we live together better than in Italy. We are richer andfreer, we have no policemen, no poor laws. We help each other, and thereare no poor. 

'Why are these Governments always doing what we don't want them to do?We should not be fighting in the Cirenaica if we were all Italians. Itis the Government that does it. They talk and talk and do things withus: but we don't want them. '

The others, tipsy, sat round the table with the terrified gravity ofchildren who are somehow responsible for things they do not understand. They stirred in their seats, turning aside, with gestures almost ofpain, of imprisonment. Only Alfredo, laying his hand on mine, waslaughing, loosely, floridly. He would upset all the Government with ajerk of his well-built shoulder, and then he would have a spree--such aspree. He laughed wetly to me. 

The Giuseppino waited patiently during this tipsy confidence, but hispale clarity and beauty was something constant star-like in comparisonwith the flushed, soft handsomeness of the other. He waited patiently, looking at me. 

But I did not want him to go on: I did not want to answer. I could feela new spirit in him, something strange and pure and slightlyfrightening. He wanted something which was beyond me. And my soul wassomewhere in tears, crying helplessly like an infant in the night. Icould not respond: I could not answer. He seemed to look at me, me, anEnglishman, an educated man, for corroboration. But I could notcorroborate him. I knew the purity and new struggling towards birth of atrue star-like spirit. But I could not confirm him in his utterance: mysoul could not respond. I did not believe in the perfectibility of man. I did not believe in infinite harmony among men. And this was his star, this belief. 

It was nearly midnight. A Swiss came in and asked for beer. The Italiansgathered round them a curious darkness of reserve. And then I must go. 

They shook hands with me warmly, truthfully, putting a sort of implicitbelief in me, as representative of some further knowledge. But there wasa fixed, calm resolve over the face of the Giuseppino, a sort of steadyfaith, even in disappointment. He gave me a copy of a little Anarchistpaper published in Geneva. _L'Anarchista_, I believe it was called. Iglanced at it. It was in Italian, naïve, simple, rather rhetorical. Sothey were all Anarchists, these Italians. 

I ran down the hill in the thick Swiss darkness to the little bridge, and along the uneven cobbled street. I did not want to think, I did notwant to know. I wanted to arrest my activity, to keep it confined to themoment, to the adventure. 

When I came to the flight of stone steps which led up to the door of theinn, at the side I saw in the darkness two figures. They said a low goodnight and parted; the girl began to knock at the door, the mandisappeared. It was the niece of the landlady parting from her lover. 

We waited outside the locked door, at the top of the stone steps, in thedarkness of midnight. The stream rustled below. Then came a shouting andan insane snarling within the passage; the bolts were not withdrawn. 

'It is the gentleman, it is the strange gentleman, ' called the girl. 

Then came again the furious shouting snarls, and the landlord's madvoice:

'Stop out, stop out there. The door won't be opened again. '

'The strange gentleman is here, ' repeated the girl. 

Then more movement was heard, and the door was suddenly opened, and thelandlord rushed out upon us, wielding a broom. It was a strange sight, in the half-lighted passage. I stared blankly in the doorway. Thelandlord dropped the broom he was waving and collapsed as if by magic, looking at me, though he continued to mutter madly, unintelligibly. Thegirl slipped past me, and the landlord snarled. Then he picked up thebrush, at the same time crying:

'You are late, the door was shut, it will not be opened. We shall havethe police in the house. We said twelve o'clock; at twelve o'clock thedoor must be shut, and must not be opened again. If you are late youstay out--'

So he went snarling, his voice rising higher and higher, away into thekitchen. 

'You are coming to your room?' the landlady said to me coldly. And sheled me upstairs. 

The room was over the road, clean, but rather ugly, with a large tin, that had once contained lard or Swiss-milk, to wash in. But the bed wasgood enough, which was all that mattered. 

I heard the landlord yelling, and there was a long and systematicthumping somewhere, thump, thump, thump, and banging. I wondered whereit was. I could not locate it at all, because my room lay beyond anotherlarge room: I had to go through a large room, by the foot of two beds, to get to my door; so I could not quite tell where anything was. 

But I went to sleep whilst I was wondering. 

I woke in the morning and washed in the tin. I could see a few people inthe street, walking in the Sunday morning leisure. It felt like Sundayin England, and I shrank from it. I could see none of the Italians. Thefactory stood there, raw and large and sombre, by the stream, and thedrab-coloured stone tenements were close by. Otherwise the village was astraggling Swiss street, almost untouched. 

The landlord was quiet and reasonable, even friendly, in the morning. Hewanted to talk to me: where had I bought my boots, was his firstquestion. I told him in Munich. And how much had they cost? I told himtwenty-eight marks. He was much impressed by them: such good boots, ofsuch soft, strong, beautiful leather; he had not seen such boots for along time. 

Then I knew it was he who had cleaned my boots. I could see himfingering them and wondering over them. I rather liked him. I could seehe had had imagination once, and a certain fineness of nature. Now hewas corrupted with drink, too far gone to be even a human being. I hatedthe village. 

They set bread and butter and a piece of cheese weighing about fivepounds, and large, fresh, sweet cakes for breakfast. I ate and wasthankful: the food was good. 

A couple of village youths came in, in their Sunday clothes. They hadthe Sunday stiffness. It reminded me of the stiffness and curiousself-consciousness that comes over life in England on a Sunday. But theLandlord sat with his waistcoat hanging open over his shirt, pot-bellied, his ruined face leaning forward, talking, always talking, wanting to know. 

So in a few minutes I was out on the road again, thanking God for theblessing of a road that belongs to no man, and travels away fromall men. 

I did not want to see the Italians. Something had got tied up in me, andI could not bear to see them again. I liked them so much; but, for somereason or other, my mind stopped like clockwork if I wanted to think ofthem and of what their lives would be, their future. It was as if somecurious negative magnetism arrested my mind, prevented it from working, the moment I turned it towards these Italians. 

I do not know why it was. But I could never write to them, or think ofthem, or even read the paper they gave me though it lay in my drawer formonths, in Italy, and I often glanced over six lines of it. And often, often my mind went back to the group, the play they were rehearsing, thewine in the pleasant café, and the night. But the moment my memorytouched them, my whole soul stopped and was null; I could not go on. Even now I cannot really consider them in thought. 

I shrink involuntarily away. I do not know why this is. 

_The Return Journey_

When one walks, one must travel west or south. If one turns northward oreastward it is like walking down a cul-de-sac, to the blind end. 

So it has been since the Crusaders came home satiated, and theRenaissance saw the western sky as an archway into the future. So it isstill. We must go westwards and southwards. 

It is a sad and gloomy thing to travel even from Italy into France. Butit is a joyful thing to walk south to Italy, south and west. It is so. And there is a certain exaltation in the thought of going west, even toCornwall, to Ireland. It is as if the magnetic poles were south-west andnorth-east, for our spirits, with the south-west, under the sunset, asthe positive pole. So whilst I walk through Switzerland, though it is avalley of gloom and depression, a light seems to flash out under everyfootstep, with the joy of progression. 

It was Sunday morning when I left the valley where the Italians lived. Iwent quickly over the stream, heading for Lucerne. It was a good thingto be out of doors, with one's pack on one's back, climbing uphill. Butthe trees were thick by the roadside; I was not yet free. It was Sundaymorning, very still. 

In two hours I was at the top of the hill, looking out over theintervening valley at the long lake of Zurich, spread there beyond withits girdle of low hills, like a relief-map. I could not bear to look atit, it was so small and unreal. I had a feeling as if it were false, alarge relief-map that I was looking down upon, and which I wanted tosmash. It seemed to intervene between me and some reality. I could notbelieve that that was the real world. It was a figment, a fabrication, like a dull landscape painted on a wall, to hide the real landscape. 

So I went on, over to the other side of the hill, and I looked outagain. Again there were the smoky-looking hills and the lake like apiece of looking-glass. But the hills were higher: that big one was theRigi. I set off down the hill. 

There was fat agricultural land and several villages. And church wasover. The churchgoers were all coming home: men in black broadcloth andold chimney-pot silk hats, carrying their umbrellas; women in uglydresses, carrying books and umbrellas. The streets were dotted withthese black-clothed men and stiff women, all reduced to a Sundaynullity. I hated it. It reminded me of that which I knew in my boyhood, that stiff, null 'propriety' which used to come over us, like a sort ofdeliberate and self-inflicted cramp, on Sundays. I hated these elders inblack broadcloth, with their neutral faces, going home piously to theirSunday dinners. I hated the feeling of these villages, comfortable, well-to-do, clean, and proper. 

And my boot was chafing two of my toes. That always happens. I had comedown to a wide, shallow valley-bed, marshy. So about a mile out of thevillage I sat down by a stone bridge, by a stream, and tore up myhandkerchief, and bound up the toes. And as I sat binding my toes, twoof the elders in black, with umbrellas under their arms, approached fromthe direction of the village. 

They made me so furious, I had to hasten to fasten my boot, to hurry onagain, before they should come near me. I could not bear the way theywalked and talked, so crambling and material and mealy-mouthed. 

Then it did actually begin to rain. I was just going down a short hill. So I sat under a bush and watched the trees drip. I was so glad to bethere, homeless, without place or belonging, crouching under the leavesin the copse by the road, that I felt I had, like the meek, inheritedthe earth. Some men went by, with their coat-collars turned up, and therain making still blacker their black broadcloth shoulders. They did notsee me. I was as safe and separate as a ghost. So I ate the remains ofmy food that I had bought in Zurich, and waited for the rain. 

Later, in the wet Sunday afternoon, I went on to the little lake, pastmany inert, neutral, material people, down an ugly road where trams ran. The blight of Sunday was almost intolerable near the town. 

So on I went, by the side of the steamy, reedy lake, walking the lengthof it. Then suddenly I went in to a little villa by the water for tea. In Switzerland every house is a villa. 

But this villa, was kept by two old ladies and a delicate dog, who mustnot get his feet wet. I was very happy there. I had good jam and strangehoney-cakes for tea, that I liked, and the little old ladies patteredround in a great stir, always whirling like two dry leaves after therestless dog. 

'Why must he not go out?' I said. 

'Because it is wet, ' they answered, 'and he coughs and sneezes. '

'Without a handkerchief, that is not _angenehm_' I said. 

So we became bosom friends. 

'You are Austrian?' they said to me. 

I said I was from Graz; that my father was a doctor in Graz, and that Iwas walking for my pleasure through the countries of Europe. 

I said this because I knew a doctor from Graz who was always wanderingabout, and because I did not want to be myself, an Englishman, to thesetwo old ladies. I wanted to be something else. So we exchangedconfidences. 

They told me, in their queer, old, toothless fashion, about theirvisitors, a man who used to fish all day, every day for three weeks, fish every hour of the day, though many a day he caught nothing--nothingat all--still he fished from the boat; and so on, such trivialities. Then they told me of a third sister who had died, a third little oldlady. One could feel the gap in the house. They cried; and I, being anAustrian from Graz, to my astonishment felt my tears slip over on to thetable. I also _was_ sorry, and I would have kissed the little old ladiesto comfort them. 

'Only in heaven it is warm, and it doesn't rain, and no one dies, ' Isaid, looking at the wet leaves. 

Then I went away. I would have stayed the night at this house: I wantedto. But I had developed my Austrian character too far. 

So I went on to a detestable brutal inn in the town. And the next day Iclimbed over the back of the detestable Rigi, with its vile hotel, tocome to Lucerne. There, on the Rigi, I met a lost young Frenchman whocould speak no German, and who said he could not find people to speakFrench. So we sat on a stone and became close friends, and I promisedfaithfully to go and visit him in his barracks in Algiers: I was to sailfrom Naples to Algiers. He wrote me the address on his card, and told mehe had friends in the regiment, to whom I should be introduced, and wecould have a good time, if I would stay a week or two, down therein Algiers. 

How much more real Algiers was than the rock on the Rigi where we sat, or the lake beneath, or the mountains beyond. Algiers is very real, though I have never seen it, and my friend is my friend for ever, thoughI have lost his card and forgotten his name. He was a Government clerkfrom Lyons, making this his first foreign tour before he began hismilitary service. He showed me his 'circular excursion ticket'. Then atlast we parted, for he must get to the top of the Rigi, and I must getto the bottom. 

Lucerne and its lake were as irritating as ever--like the wrapper roundmilk chocolate. I could not sleep even one night there: I took thesteamer down the lake, to the very last station. There I found a goodGerman inn, and was happy. 

There was a tall thin young man, whose face was red and inflamed fromthe sun. I thought he was a German tourist. He had just come in; and hewas eating bread and milk. He and I were alone in the eating-room. Hewas looking at an illustrated paper. 

'Does the steamer stop here all night?' I asked him in German, hearingthe boat bustling and blowing her steam on the water outside, andglancing round at her lights, red and white, in the pitch darkness. 

He only shook his head over his bread and milk, and did not lift hisface. 

'Are you English, then?' I said. 

No one but an Englishman would have hidden his face in a bowl of milk, and have shaken his red ears in such painful confusion. 

'Yes, ' he said, 'I am. '

And I started almost out of my skin at the unexpected London accent. Itwas as if one suddenly found oneself in the Tube. 

'So am I, ' I said. 'Where have you come from?'

Then he began, like a general explaining his plans, to tell me. He hadwalked round over the Furka Pass, had been on foot four or five days. Hehad walked tremendously. Knowing no German, and nothing of themountains, he had set off alone on this tour: he had a fortnight'sholiday. So he had come over the Rhône Glacier across the Furka and downfrom Andermatt to the Lake. On this last day he had walked about thirtymountain miles. 

'But weren't you tired?' I said, aghast. 

He was. Under the inflamed redness of his sun- and wind- and snow-burnedface he was sick with fatigue. He had done over a hundred miles in thelast four days. 

'Did you enjoy it?' I asked. 

'Oh yes. I wanted to do it all. ' He wanted to do it, and he _had_ doneit. But God knows what he wanted to do it for. He had now one day atLucerne, one day at Interlaken and Berne, then London. 

I was sorry for him in my soul, he was so cruelly tired, so perishinglyvictorious. 

'Why did you do so much?' I said. 'Why did you come on foot all down thevalley when you could have taken the train? Was it worth it?'

'I think so, ' he said. 

Yet he was sick with fatigue and over-exhaustion. His eyes were quitedark, sightless: he seemed to have lost the power of seeing, to bevirtually blind. He hung his head forward when he had to write a postcard, as if he felt his way. But he turned his post card so that Ishould not see to whom it was addressed; not that I was interested; onlyI noticed his little, cautious, English movement of privacy. 

'What time will you be going on?' I asked. 

'When is the first steamer?' he said, and he turned out a guide-bookwith a time-table. He would leave at about seven. 

'But why so early?' I said to him. 

He must be in Lucerne at a certain hour, and at Interlaken in theevening. 

'I suppose you will rest when you get to London?' I said. 

He looked at me quickly, reservedly. 

I was drinking beer: I asked him wouldn't he have something. He thoughta moment, then said he would have another glass of hot milk. Thelandlord came--'And bread?' he asked. 

The Englishman refused. He could not eat, really. Also he was poor; hehad to husband his money. The landlord brought the milk and asked me, when would the gentleman want to go away. So I made arrangements betweenthe landlord and the stranger. But the Englishman was slightlyuncomfortable at my intervention. He did not like me to know what hewould have for breakfast. 

I could feel so well the machine that had him in its grip. He slaved fora year, mechanically, in London, riding in the Tube, working in theoffice. Then for a fortnight he was let free. So he rushed toSwitzerland, with a tour planned out, and with just enough money to seehim through, and to buy presents at Interlaken: bits of the edelweisspottery: I could see him going home with them. 

So he arrived, and with amazing, pathetic courage set forth on foot in astrange land, to face strange landlords, with no language but English athis command, and his purse definitely limited. Yet he wanted to go amongthe mountains, to cross a glacier. So he had walked on and on, like onepossessed, ever forward. His name might have been Excelsior, indeed. 

But then, when he reached his Furka, only to walk along the ridge and todescend on the same side! My God, it was killing to the soul. And herehe was, down again from the mountains, beginning his journey home again:steamer and train and steamer and train and Tube, till he was back inthe machine. 

It hadn't let him go, and he knew it. Hence his cruel self-torture offatigue, his cruel exercise of courage. He who hung his head in his milkin torment when I asked him a question in German, what courage had henot needed to take this his very first trip out of England, alone, on foot!

His eyes were dark and deep with unfathomable courage. Yet he was goingback in the morning. He was going back. All he had courage for was to goback. He would go back, though he died by inches. Why not? It waskilling him, it was like living loaded with irons. But he had thecourage to submit, to die that way, since it was the way allottedto him. 

The way he sank on the table in exhaustion, drinking his milk, his will, nevertheless, so perfect and unblemished, triumphant, though his bodywas broken and in anguish, was almost too much to bear. My heart waswrung for my countryman, wrung till it bled. 

I could not bear to understand my countryman, a man who worked for hisliving, as I had worked, as nearly all my countrymen work. He would notgive in. On his holiday he would walk, to fulfil his purpose, walk on;no matter how cruel the effort were, he would not rest, he would notrelinquish his purpose nor abate his will, not by one jot or tittle. Hisbody must pay whatever his will demanded, though it were torture. 

It all seemed to me so foolish. I was almost in tears. He went to bed. Iwalked by the dark lake, and talked to the girl in the inn. She was apleasant girl: it was a pleasant inn, a homely place. One could behappy there. 

In the morning it was sunny, the lake was blue. By night I should benearly at the crest of my journey. I was glad. 

The Englishman had gone. I looked for his name in the book. It waswritten in a fair, clerkly hand. He lived at Streatham. Suddenly I hatedhim. The dogged fool, to keep his nose on the grindstone like that. Whatwas all his courage but the very tip-top of cowardice? What a vilenature--almost Sadish, proud, like the infamous Red Indians, of beingable to stand torture. 

The landlord came to talk to me. He was fat and comfortable and toorespectful. But I had to tell him all the Englishman had done, in theway of a holiday, just to shame his own fat, ponderous, inn-keeper'sluxuriousness that was too gross. Then all I got out of his enormouscomfortableness was:

'Yes, that's a _very_ long step to take. '

So I set off myself, up the valley between the close, snow-toppedmountains, whose white gleamed above me as I crawled, small as aninsect, along the dark, cold valley below. 

There had been a cattle fair earlier in the morning, so troops of cattlewere roving down the road, some with bells tang-tanging, all with softfaces and startled eyes and a sudden swerving of horns. The grass wasvery green by the roads and by the streams; the shadows of the mountainslopes were very dark on either hand overhead, and the sky with snowyflanks and tips was high up. 

Here, away from the world, the villages were quiet and obscure--leftbehind. They had the same fascinating atmosphere of being forgotten, left out of the world, that old English villages have. And buying applesand cheese and bread in a little shop that sold everything and smelledof everything, I felt at home again. 

But climbing gradually higher, mile after mile, always between theshadows of the high mountains, I was glad I did not live in the Alps. The villages on the slopes, the people there, seemed, as if they _must_gradually, bit by bit, slide down and tumble to the water-course, and berolled on away, away to the sea. Straggling, haphazard little villagesledged on the slope, high up, beside their wet, green, hanging meadows, with pine trees behind and the valley bottom far below, and rocks rightabove, on both sides, seemed like little temporary squattings of outcastpeople. It seemed impossible that they should persist there, with greatshadows wielded over them, like a menace, and gleams of brief sunshine, like a window. There was a sense of momentariness and expectation. Itseemed as though some dramatic upheaval must take place, the mountainsfall down into their own shadows. The valley beds were like deep graves, the sides of the mountains like the collapsing walls of a grave. Thevery mountain-tops above, bright with transcendent snow, seemed likedeath, eternal death. 

There, it seemed, in the glamorous snow, was the source of death, whichfell down in great waves of shadow and rock, rushing to the level earth. And all the people of the mountains, on the slopes, in the valleys, seemed to live upon this great, rushing wave of death, of breaking-down, of destruction. 

The very pure source of breaking-down, decomposition, the very quick ofcold death, is the snowy mountain-peak above. There, eternally, goes onthe white foregathering of the crystals, out of the deathly cold of theheavens; this is the static nucleus where death meets life in itselementality. And thence, from their white, radiant nucleus of death inlife, flows the great flux downwards, towards life and warmth. And webelow, we cannot think of the flux upwards, that flows from theneedle-point of snow to the unutterable cold and death. 

The people under the mountains, they seem to live in the flux of death, the last, strange, overshadowed units of life. Big shadows wave overthem, there is the eternal noise of water falling icily downwards fromthe source of death overhead. 

And the people under the shadows, dwelling in the tang of snow and thenoise of icy water, seem dark, almost sordid, brutal. There is noflowering or coming to flower, only this persistence, in the ice-touchedair, of reproductive life. 

But it is difficult to get a sense of a native population. Everywhereare the hotels and the foreigners, the parasitism. Yet there is, unseen, this overshadowed, overhung, sordid mountain population, ledged on theslopes and in the crevices. In the wider valleys there is still a senseof cowering among the people. But they catch a new tone from theircontact with the foreigners. And in the towns are nothing buttradespeople. 

So I climbed slowly up, for a whole day, first along the highroad, sometimes above and sometimes below the twisting, serpentine railway, then afterwards along a path on the side of the hill--a path that wentthrough the crew-yards of isolated farms and even through the garden ofa village priest. The priest was decorating an archway. He stood on achair in the sunshine, reaching up with a garland, whilst theserving-woman stood below, talking loudly. 

The valley here seemed wider, the great flanks of the mountains gaveplace, the peaks above were further back. So one was happier. I waspleased as I sat by the thin track of single flat stones that droppedswiftly downhill. 

At the bottom was a little town with a factory or quarry, or a foundry, some place with long, smoking chimneys; which made me feel quite at homeamong the mountains. 

It is the hideous rawness of the world of men, the horrible, desolatingharshness of the advance of the industrial world upon the world ofnature, that is so painful. It looks as though the industrial spread ofmankind were a sort of dry disintegration advancing and advancing, aprocess of dry disintegration. If only we could learn to take thoughtfor the whole world instead of for merely tiny bits of it. 

I went through the little, hideous, crude factory-settlement in the highvalley, where the eternal snows gleamed, past the enormousadvertisements for chocolate and hotels, up the last steep slope of thepass to where the tunnel begins. Göschenen, the village at the mouth ofthe tunnel, is all railway sidings and haphazard villas for tourists, post cards, and touts and weedy carriages; disorder and sterile chaos, high up. How should any one stay there!

I went on up the pass itself. There were various parties of visitors onthe roads and tracks, people from towns incongruously walking anddriving. It was drawing on to evening. I climbed slowly, between thegreat cleft in the rock where are the big iron gates, through which theroad winds, winds half-way down the narrow gulley of solid, living rock, the very throat of the path, where hangs a tablet in memory of manyRussians killed. 

Emerging through the dark rocky throat of the pass I came to the upperworld, the level upper world. It was evening, livid, cold. On eitherside spread the sort of moorland of the wide pass-head. I drew nearalong the high-road, to Andermatt. 

Everywhere were soldiers moving about the livid, desolate waste of thisupper world. I passed the barracks and the first villas for visitors. Darkness was coming on; the straggling, inconclusive street of Andermattlooked as if it were some accident--houses, hotels, barracks, lodging-places tumbled at random as the caravan of civilization crossedthis high, cold, arid bridge of the European world. 

I bought two post cards and wrote them out of doors in the cold, lividtwilight. Then I asked a soldier where was the post-office. He directedme. It was something like sending post cards from Skegness or Bognor, there in the post-office. 

I was trying to make myself agree to stay in Andermatt for the night. But I could not. The whole place was so terribly raw and flat andaccidental, as if great pieces of furniture had tumbled out of apantechnicon and lay discarded by the road. I hovered in the street, inthe twilight, trying to make myself stay. I looked at the announcementsof lodgings and boarding for visitors. It was no good. I could not gointo one of these houses. 

So I passed on, through the old, low, broad-eaved houses that cringedown to the very street, out into the open again. The air was fierce andsavage. On one side was a moorland, level; on the other a sweep of nakedhill, curved concave, and sprinkled with snow. I could see how wonderfulit would all be, under five or six feet of winter snow, skiing andtobogganing at Christmas. But it needed the snow. In the summer there isto be seen nothing but the winter's broken detritus. 

The twilight deepened, though there was still the strange, glassytranslucency of the snow-lit air. A fragment of moon was in the sky. Acarriage-load of French tourists passed me. There was the loud noise ofwater, as ever, something eternal and maddening in its sound, like thesound of Time itself, rustling and rushing and wavering, but never for asecond ceasing. The rushing of Time that continues throughout eternity, this is the sound of the icy streams of Switzerland, something thatmocks and destroys our warm being. 

So I came, in the early darkness, to the little village with the brokencastle that stands for ever frozen at the point where the track parts, one way continuing along the ridge, to the Furka Pass, the otherswerving over the hill to the left, over the Gotthardt. 

In this village I must stay. I saw a woman looking hastily, furtivelyfrom a doorway. I knew she was looking for visitors. I went on up thehilly street. There were only a few wooden houses and a gaily lightedwooden inn, where men were laughing, and strangers, men, standingtalking loudly in the doorway. 

It was very difficult to go to a house this night. I did not want toapproach any of them. I turned back to the house of the peering woman. She had looked hen-like and anxious. She would be glad of a visitor tohelp her pay her rent. 

It was a clean, pleasant wooden house, made to keep out the cold. Thatseemed its one function: to defend the inmates from the cold. It wasfurnished like a hut, just tables and chairs and bare wooden walls. Onefelt very close and secure in the room, as in a hut, shut away from theouter world. 

The hen-like woman came. 

'Can I have a bed, ' I said, 'for the night?'

'_Abendessen, ja!_' she replied. 'Will you have soup and boiled beef andvegetables?'

I said I would, so I sat down to wait, in the utter silence. I couldscarcely hear the ice-stream, the silence seemed frozen, the houseempty. The woman seemed to be flitting aimlessly, scurriedly, in reflexagainst the silence. One could almost touch the stillness as one couldtouch the walls, or the stove, or the table with white Americanoil-cloth. 

Suddenly she appeared again. 

'What will you drink?'

She watched my face anxiously, and her voice was pathetic, slightlypleading in its quickness. 

'Wine or beer?' she said. 

I would not trust the coldness of beer. 

'A half of red wine, ' I said. 

I knew she was going to keep me an indefinite time. 

She appeared with the wine and bread. 

'Would you like omelette after the beef?' she asked. 'Omelette withcognac--I can make it _very_ good. '

I knew I should be spending too much, but I said yes. After all, whyshould I not eat, after the long walk?

So she left me again, whilst I sat in the utter isolation and stillness, eating bread and drinking the wine, which was good. And I listened forany sound: only the faint noise of the stream. And I wondered, Why am Ihere, on this ridge of the Alps, in the lamp-lit, wooden, close-shutroom, alone? Why am I here?

Yet somehow I was glad, I was happy even: such splendid silence andcoldness and clean isolation. It was something eternal, unbroachable: Iwas free, in this heavy, ice-cold air, this upper world, alone. London, far away below, beyond, England, Germany, France--they were all sounreal in the night. It was a sort of grief that this continent allbeneath was so unreal, false, non-existent in its activity. Out of thesilence one looked down on it, and it seemed to have lost allimportance, all significance. It was so big, yet it had no significance. The kingdom of the world had no significance: what could one do butwander about?

The woman came with my soup. I asked her, did not many people come inthe summer. But she was scared away, she did not answer, she went like aleaf in the wind. However, the soup was good and plentiful. 

She was a long time before she came with the next course. Then she putthe tray on the table, and looking at me, then looking away, shrinking, she said:

'You must excuse me if I don't answer you--I don't hear well--I amrather deaf. '

I looked at her, and I winced also. She shrank in such simple pain fromthe fact of her defect. I wondered if she were bullied because of it, oronly afraid lest visitors would dislike it. 

She put the dishes in order, set me my plate, quickly, nervously, andwas gone again, like a scared chicken. Being tired, I wanted to weepover her, the nervous, timid hen, so frightened by her own deafness. Thehouse was silent of her, empty. It was perhaps her deafness whichcreated this empty soundlessness. 

When she came with the omelette, I said to her loudly:

'That was very good, the soup and meat. ' So she quivered nervously, andsaid, 'Thank you, ' and I managed to talk to her. She was like most deafpeople, in that her terror of not hearing made her six times worse thanshe actually was. 

She spoke with a soft, strange accent, so I thought she was perhaps aforeigner. But when I asked her she misunderstood, and I had not theheart to correct her. I can only remember she said her house was alwaysfull in the winter, about Christmas-time. People came for the wintersport. There were two young English ladies who always came to her. 

She spoke of them warmly. Then, suddenly afraid, she drifted off again. I ate the omelette with cognac, which was very good, then I looked inthe street. It was very dark, with bright stars, and smelled of snow. Two village men went by. I was tired, I did not want to go to the inn. 

So I went to bed, in the silent, wooden house. I had a small bedroom, clean and wooden and very cold. Outside, the stream was rushing. Icovered myself with a great depth of featherbed, and looked at thestars, and the shadowy upper world, and went to sleep. 

In the morning I washed in the ice-cold water, and was glad to set out. An icy mist was over the noisy stream, there were a few meagre, shreddedpine-trees. I had breakfast and paid my bill: it was seven francs--morethan I could afford; but that did not matter, once I was out in the air. 

The sky was blue and perfect, it was a ringing morning, the village wasvery still. I went up the hill till I came to the signpost. I lookeddown the direction of the Furka, and thought of my tired Englishman fromStreatham, who would be on his way home. Thank God I need not go home:never, perhaps. I turned up the track to the left, to the Gothard. 

Standing looking round at the mountain-tops, at the village and thebroken castle below me, at the scattered debris of Andermatt on the moorin the distance, I was jumping in my soul with delight. Should one evergo down to the lower world?

Then I saw another figure striding along, a youth with knee-breeches andAlpine hat and braces over his shirt, walking manfully, his coat slungin his rucksack behind. I laughed, and waited. He came my way. 

'Are you going over the Gothard?' I said. 

'Yes, ' he replied. 'Are you also?'

'Yes' I said. 'We will go together. '

So we set off, climbing a track up the heathy rocks. 

He was a pale, freckled town youth from Basel, seventeen years old. Hewas a clerk in a baggage-transport firm--Gondrand Frères, I believe. Hehad a week's holiday, in which time he was going to make a big circularwalk, something like the Englishman's. But he was accustomed to thismountain walking: he belonged to a Sportverein. Manfully he marched inhis thick hob-nailed boots, earnestly he scrambled up the rocks. 

We were in the crest of the pass. Broad snow-patched slopes came downfrom the pure sky; the defile was full of stones, all bare stones, enormous ones as big as a house, and small ones, pebbles. Through thesethe road wound in silence, through this upper, transcendent desolation, wherein was only the sound of the stream. Sky and snow-patched slopes, then the stony, rocky bed of the defile, full of morning sunshine: thiswas all. We were crossing in silence from the northern world tothe southern. 

But he, Emil, was going to take the train back, through the tunnel, inthe evening, to resume his circular walk at Göschenen. 

I, however, was going on, over the ridge of the world, from the northinto the south. So I was glad. 

We climbed up the gradual incline for a long time. The slopes abovebecame lower, they began to recede. The sky was very near, we werewalking under the sky. 

Then the defile widened out, there was an open place before us, the verytop of the pass. Also there were low barracks, and soldiers. We heardfiring. Standing still, we saw on the slopes of snow, under the radiantblue heaven, tiny puffs of smoke, then some small black figures crossingthe snow patch, then another rattle of rifle-fire, rattling dry andunnatural in the upper, skyey air, between the rocks. 

'_Das ist schön_, ' said my companion, in his simple admiration. 

'_Hübsch_, ' I said. 

'But that would be splendid, to be firing up there, manoeuvring up inthe snow. '

And he began to tell me how hard a soldier's life was, how hard thesoldier was drilled. 

'You don't look forward to it?' I said. 

'Oh yes, I do. I want to be a soldier, I want to serve my time. '

'Why?'I said. 

'For the exercise, the life, the drilling. One becomes strong. '

'Do all the Swiss want to serve their time in the army?' I asked. 

'Yes--they all want to. It is good for every man, and it keeps us alltogether. Besides, it is only for a year. For a year it is very good. The Germans have three years--that is too long, that is bad. '

I told him how the soldiers in Bavaria hated the military service. 

'Yes, ' he said, 'that is true of Germans. The system is different. Oursis much better; in Switzerland a man enjoys his time as a soldier. Iwant to go. '

So we watched the black dots of soldiers crawling over the high snow, listened to the unnatural dry rattle of guns, up there. 

Then we were aware of somebody whistling, of soldiers yelling down theroad. We were to come on, along the level, over the bridge. So wemarched quickly forward, away from the slopes, towards the hotel, once amonastery, that stood in the distance. The light was blue and clear onthe reedy lakes of this upper place; it was a strange desolation ofwater and bog and rocks and road, hedged by the snowy slopes round therim, under the very sky. 

The soldier was yelling again. I could not tell what he said. 

'He says if we don't run we can't come at all, ' said Emil. 

'I won't run, ' I said. 

So we hurried forwards, over the bridge, where the soldier on guard wasstanding. 

'Do you want to be shot?' he said angrily, as we came up. 

'No, thanks, ' I said. 

Emil was very serious. 

'How long should we have had to wait if we hadn't got through now?' heasked the soldier, when we were safely out of danger. 

'Till one o'clock, ' was the reply. 

'Two hours!' said Emil, strangely elated. 'We should have had to waittwo hours before we could come on. He was riled that we didn't run, ' andhe laughed with glee. 

So we marched over the level to the hotel. We called in for a glass ofhot milk. I asked in German. But the maid, a pert hussy, elegant andsuperior, was French. She served us with great contempt, as twoworthless creatures, poverty-stricken. It abashed poor Emil, but wemanaged to laugh at her. This made her very angry. In the smoking-roomshe raised up her voice in French:

'_Du lait chaud pour les chameaux. _'

'Some hot milk for the camels, she says, ' I translated for Emil. He wascovered with confusion and youthful anger. 

But I called to her, tapped the table and called:

'_Mademoiselle!_'

She appeared flouncingly in the doorway. 

'_Encore du lait pour les chameaux_, ' I said. 

And she whisked our glasses off the table, and flounced out without aword. 

But she would not come in again with the milk. A German girl brought it. We laughed, and she smiled primly. 

When we set forth again, Emil rolled up his sleeves and turned back hisshirt from his neck and breast, to do the thing thoroughly. Besides, itwas midday, and the sun was hot; and, with his bulky pack on his back, he suggested the camel of the French maid more than ever. 

We were on the downward slope. Only a short way from the hotel, andthere was the drop, the great cleft in the mountains running down fromthis shallow pot among the peaks. 

The descent on the south side is much more precipitous and wonderfulthan the ascent from the north. On the south, the rocks are craggy andstupendous; the little river falls headlong down; it is not a stream, itis one broken, panting cascade far away in the gulley below, inthe darkness. 

But on the slopes the sun pours in, the road winds down with its tail inits mouth, always in endless loops returning on itself. The mules thattravel upward seem to be treading in a mill. 

Emil took the narrow tracks, and, like the water, we cascaded down, leaping from level to level, leaping, running, leaping, descendingheadlong, only resting now and again when we came down on to anotherlevel of the high-road. 

Having begun, we could not help ourselves, we were like two stonesbouncing down. Emil was highly elated. He waved his thin, bare, whitearms as he leapt, his chest grew pink with the exercise. Now he felt hewas doing something that became a member of his Sportverein. Down wewent, jumping, running, britching. 

It was wonderful on this south side, so sunny, with feathery trees anddeep black shadows. It reminded me of Goethe, of the romantic period:

 _Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen blühen?_

So we went tumbling down into the south, very swiftly, along with thetumbling stream. But it was very tiring. We went at a great pace downthe gully, between the sheer rocks. Trees grew in the ledges high overour heads, trees grew down below. And ever we descended. 

Till gradually the gully opened, then opened into a wide valley-head, and we saw Airolo away below us, the railway emerging from its hole, thewhole valley like a cornucopia full of sunshine. 

Poor Emil was tired, more tired than I was. And his big boots had hurthis feet in the descent. So, having come to the open valley-head, wewent more gently. He had become rather quiet. 

The head of the valley had that half-tamed, ancient aspect that remindedme of the Romans. I could only expect the Roman legions to be encampeddown there; and the white goats feeding on the bushes belonged to aRoman camp. 

But no, we saw again the barracks of the Swiss soldiery, and again wewere in the midst of rifle-fire and manoeuvres. But we went evenly, tired now, and hungry. We had nothing to eat. 

It is strange how different the sun-dried, ancient, southern slopes ofthe world are, from the northern slopes. It is as if the god Pan reallyhad his home among these sun-bleached stones and tough, sun-dark trees. And one knows it all in one's blood, it is pure, sun-dried memory. So Iwas content, coming down into Airolo. 

We found the streets were Italian, the houses sunny outside and darkwithin, like Italy, there were laurels in the road. Poor Emil was aforeigner all at once. He rolled down his shirt sleeves and fastened hisshirt-neck, put on his coat and collar, and became a foreigner in hissoul, pale and strange. 

I saw a shop with vegetables and grapes, a real Italian shop, a darkcave. 

'_Quanto costa l'uva?_' were my first words in the south. 

'_Sessanta al chilo_, ' said the girl. 

And it was as pleasant as a drink of wine, the Italian. 

So Emil and I ate the sweet black grapes as we went to the station. 

He was very poor. We went into the third-class restaurant at thestation. He ordered beer and bread and sausage; I ordered soup andboiled beef and vegetables. 

They brought me a great quantity, so, whilst the girl was servingcoffee-with-rum to the men at the bar, I took another spoon and knifeand fork and plates for Emil, and we had two dinners from my one. Whenthe girl--she was a woman of thirty-five--came back, she looked at ussharply. I smiled at her coaxingly; so she gave a small, kindly smilein reply. 

'_Ja, dies ist reizend_, ' said Emil, _sotto voce_, exulting. He was veryshy. But we were curiously happy, in that railway restaurant. 

Then we sat very still, on the platform, and waited for the train. Itwas like Italy, pleasant and social to wait in the railway station, allthe world easy and warm in its activity, with the sun shining. 

I decided to take a franc's worth of train-journey. So I chose mystation. It was one franc twenty, third class. Then my train came, andEmil and I parted, he waving to me till I was out of sight. I was sorryhe had to go back, he did so want to venture forth. 

So I slid for a dozen miles or more, sleepily, down the Ticino valley, sitting opposite two fat priests in their feminine black. 

When I got out at my station I felt for the first time ill at ease. Whywas I getting out at this wayside place, on to the great, raw high-road?I did not know. But I set off walking. It was nearly tea-time. 

Nothing in the world is more ghastly than these Italian roads, new, mechanical, belonging to a machine life. The old roads are wonderful, skilfully aiming their way. But these new great roads are desolating, more desolating than all the ruins in the world. 

I walked on and on, down the Ticino valley, towards Bellinzona. Thevalley was perhaps beautiful: I don't know. I can only remember theroad. It was broad and new, and it ran very often beside the railway. Itran also by quarries and by occasional factories, also through villages. And the quality of its sordidness is something that does not bearthinking of, a quality that has entered Italian life now, if it was notthere before. 

Here and there, where there were quarries or industries, greatlodging-houses stood naked by the road, great, grey, desolate places;and squalid children were playing round the steps, and dirty menslouched in. Everything seemed under a weight. 

Down the road of the Ticino valley I felt again my terror of this newworld which is coming into being on top of us. One always feels it in asuburb, on the edge of a town, where the land is being broken under theadvance of houses. But this is nothing, in England, to the terror onefeels on the new Italian roads, where these great blind cubes ofdwellings rise stark from the destroyed earth, swarming with a sort ofverminous life, really verminous, purely destructive. 

It seems to happen when the peasant suddenly leaves his home and becomesa workman. Then an entire change comes over everywhere. Life is now amatter of selling oneself to slave-work, building roads or labouring inquarries or mines or on the railways, purposeless, meaningless, reallyslave-work, each integer doing his mere labour, and all for no purpose, except to have money, and to get away from the old system. 

These Italian navvies work all day long, their whole life is engaged inthe mere brute labour. And they are the navvies of the world. And whilstthey are navvying, they are almost shockingly indifferent to theircircumstances, merely callous to the dirt and foulness. 

It is as if the whole social form were breaking down, and the humanelement swarmed within the disintegration, like maggots in cheese. Theroads, the railways are built, the mines and quarries are excavated, butthe whole organism of life, the social organism, is slowly crumbling andcaving in, in a kind of process of dry rot, most terrifying to see. Sothat it seems as though we should be left at last with a great system ofroads and railways and industries, and a world of utter chaos seethingupon these fabrications: as if we had created a steel framework, and thewhole body of society were crumbling and rotting in between. It is mostterrifying to realize; and I have always felt this terror upon a newItalian high-road--more there than anywhere. 

The remembrance of the Ticino valley is a sort of nightmare to me. Butit was better when at last, in the darkness of night, I got intoBellinzona. In the midst of the town one felt the old organism stillliving. It is only at its extremities that it is falling to pieces, asin dry rot. 

In the morning, leaving Bellinzona, again I went in terror of the new, evil high-road, with its skirting of huge cubical houses and itsseething navvy population. Only the peasants driving in with fruit wereconsoling. But I was afraid of them: the same spirit had set in in them. 

I was no longer happy in Switzerland, not even when I was eating greatblackberries and looking down at the Lago Maggiore, at Locarno, lying bythe lake; the terror of the callous, disintegrating process was toostrong in me. 

At a little inn a man was very good to me. He went into his garden andfetched me the first grapes and apples and peaches, bringing them inamongst leaves, and heaping them before me. He was Italian-Swiss; he hadbeen in a bank in Bern; now he had retired, had bought his paternalhome, and was a free man. He was about fifty years old; he spent all histime in his garden; his daughter attended to the inn. 

He talked to me, as long as I stayed, about Italy and Switzerland andwork and life. He was retired, he was free. But he was only nominallyfree. He had only achieved freedom from labour. He knew that the systemhe had escaped at last, persisted, and would consume his sons and hisgrandchildren. He himself had more or less escaped back to the old form;but as he came with me on to the hillside, looking down the high-road atLugano in the distance, he knew that his old order was collapsing by aslow process of disintegration. 

Why did he talk to me as if I had any hope, as if I represented anypositive truth as against this great negative truth that was advancingup the hill-side. Again I was afraid. I hastened down the high-road, past the houses, the grey, raw crystals of corruption. 

I saw a girl with handsome bare legs, ankles shining like brass in thesun. She was working in a field, on the edge of a vineyard. I stopped tolook at her, suddenly fascinated by her handsome naked flesh that shonelike brass. 

Then she called out to me, in a jargon I could not understand, somethingmocking and challenging. And her voice was raucous and challenging; Iwent on, afraid. 

In Lugano I stayed at a German hotel. I remember sitting on a seat inthe darkness by the lake, watching the stream of promenaders patrollingthe edge of the water, under the trees and the lamps. I can still seemany of their faces: English, German, Italian, French. And it seemedhere, here in this holiday-place, was the quick of the disintegration, the dry-rot, in this dry, friable flux of people backwards and forwardson the edge of the lake, men and women from the big hotels, in eveningdress, curiously sinister, and ordinary visitors, and tourists, andworkmen, youths, men of the town, laughing, jeering. It was curiouslyand painfully sinister, almost obscene. 

I sat a long time among them, thinking of the girl with her limbs ofglowing brass. Then at last I went up to the hotel, and sat in thelounge looking at the papers. It was the same here as down below, thoughnot so intense, the feeling of horror. 

So I went to bed. The hotel was on the edge of a steep declivity. Iwondered why the whole hills did not slide down, in some great naturalcatastrophe. 

In the morning I walked along the side of the Lake of Lugano, to where Icould take a steamer to ferry me down to the end. The lake is notbeautiful, only picturesque. I liked most to think of the Romanscoming to it. 

So I steamed down to the lower end of the water. When I landed and wentalong by a sort of railway I saw a group of men. Suddenly they began towhoop and shout. They were hanging on to an immense pale bullock, whichwas slung up to be shod; and it was lunging and kicking with terribleenergy. It was strange to see that mass of pale, soft-looking fleshworking with such violent frenzy, convulsed with violent, active frenzy, whilst men and women hung on to it with ropes, hung on and weighed itdown. But again it scattered some of them in its terrible convulsion. Human beings scattered into the road, the whole place was covered withhot dung. And when the bullock began to lunge again, the men set up ahowl, half of triumph, half of derision. 

I went on, not wanting to see. I went along a very dusty road. But itwas not so terrifying, this road. Perhaps it was older. 

In dreary little Chiasso I drank coffee, and watched the come and gothrough the Customs. The Swiss and the Italian Customs officials hadtheir offices within a few yards of each other, and everybody must stop. I went in and showed my rucksack to the Italian, then I mounted a tram, and went to the Lake of Como. 

In the tram were dressed-up women, fashionable, but business-like. Theyhad come by train to Chiasso, or else had been shopping in the town. 

When we came to the terminus a young miss, dismounting before me, leftbehind her parasol. I had been conscious of my dusty, grimy appearanceas I sat in the tram, I knew they thought me a workman on the roads. However, I forgot that when it was time to dismount. 

'_Pardon, Mademoiselle_, ' I said to the young miss. She turned andwithered me with a rather overdone contempt--'_bourgeoise_, ' I said tomyself, as I looked at her--'_Vous avez laissé votre parasol_. '

She turned, and with a rapacious movement darted upon her parasol. Howher soul was in her possessions! I stood and watched her. Then she wentinto the road and under the trees, haughty, a demoiselle. She had onwhite kid boots. 

I thought of the Lake of Como what I had thought of Lugano: it must havebeen wonderful when the Romans came there. Now it is all villas. I thinkonly the sunrise is still wonderful, sometimes. 

I took the steamer down to Como, and slept in a vast old stone cavern ofan inn, a remarkable place, with rather nice people. In the morning Iwent out. The peace and the bygone beauty of the cathedral created theglow of the great past. And in the market-place they were sellingchestnuts wholesale, great heaps of bright, brown chestnuts, and sacksof chestnuts, and peasants very eager selling and buying. I thought ofComo, it must have been wonderful even a hundred years ago. Now it iscosmopolitan, the cathedral is like a relic, a museum object, everywherestinks of mechanical money-pleasure. I dared not risk walking to Milan:I took a train. And there, in Milan, sitting in the Cathedral Square, onSaturday afternoon, drinking Bitter Campari and watching the swarm ofItalian city-men drink and talk vivaciously, I saw that here the lifewas still vivid, here the process of disintegration was vigorous, andcentred in a multiplicity of mechanical activities that engage the humanmind as well as the body. But always there was the same purpose stinkingin it all, the mechanizing, the perfect mechanizing of human life.