Chapter XXIV: Rome 353 (2)

For Perugia is careless, beautifully and graciously careless. She has forgotten her woes, she has almost forgotten her old enemies; she has certainly forgotten to finish her cathedral. And yet when we sat at night in this romantic spot, where the art of four hundred years is garnered, we noticed a little yellow lamp flickering unsteadily above the cathedral door, no brighter than a glow-worm in comparison with the flare of electric light close at hand. The passers-by told us its history: how the people of Perugia, feeling the iron hand of the Farnese Pope, turned for help to Ridolfo, the last of the great Baglioni Princes. How Ridolfo failed them, and how in their extremity they turned to Christ, and besought Him with cries and sobs, tearing their garments and beating themselves like the Flagellants of the thirteenth century, to defend them against the terrible Paul III. They placed the crucifix above the door of San Lorenzo, where the light shines every night, and laid the keys of the city below the tortured feet of the Saviour. We know that their prayers were of no avail, yet every night in Perugia, that city of beautiful and romantic memories, they still light the little lantern over the cathedral door, where the crucifix was placed, when they crept with fear and trembling to the feet of Christ to ask for help against his Vicar, because Ridolfo Baglione, forsooth! had failed them in their necessity.

A step from here and we found ourselves in the dark and memory-laden streets of the old town, with their vaulted passages and their blocked-up Doors of the Dead--those pitiful defences against the Common Enemy, in which Japan as well as Italy put faith.[5] Of them all I loved the Via Vecchia best, with its air of mystery and its many arches linking the grim old palaces together. At night it was so gloomy there that we could barely find our way past the ancient Canonica in which so many of the Popes snatched a holiday from Rome; and as we went down the hill, always between great palaces, the darkness closed round us. Here and there a feeble light illuminated the steep path, but for the rest there was only the starlight to guide us until we came to the great Porta Augusta, which spanned the road majestically, full of the dignity of dead Etruria. Seen thus against the stars, with its graceful fifteenth-century loggia faintly illumined by a yellow light within, it was as impressive as the pylon of an Egyptian Temple.

Or, if our steps took us another way, we passed the grim towers of mediaeval mansions, and presently found ourselves at the Baglioni's Gate of Dreams, or the Porta Mandola, as the Etruscan gate is called. Here, of a certainty, we would hear music, for whenever I have passed through that ancient gate at night, the silence has been broken by gay songs. Sometimes I have sat there far into the night, dreaming of the Baglioni and listening to the careless music of I knew not what laughter-loving house. For no one can live long in Perugia without being fired by the memory of those strange men whose strength and beauty was famous throughout Italy, and whose lovely names alone fit them to be the heroes of romance--Grifonetto, Astorre, Gismondo, Sermonetto, Morgante. If we believe their adoring chronicler, who though he traced their downfall could not speak of them without the stately prefix 'High and Mighty Lords,' their beauty was the beauty of the ancient Gods of Greece, and their courage was the courage of the Heroes. And who of us but has wept over the Great Betrayal, and the passing of the beautiful Grifonetto, forgiven at the last by Atalanta? And who has not loved the young Astorre in his Cloth of Gold bringing his fair young bride back to his home; and thrilled to read of the Homeric death of Sermonetto, 'so strong and gallant while he lived that tongue of man cannot tell the worth of him. One, in very truth, who never in all his days knew what fear was, and till the last word died on his lips ever showed himself the greater-hearted, as though he were not vanquished, but victor of his foe.'

* * * * *

Early one hot and cloudless August morning, while the farmers with many cries of 'per la Madonna!' were urging their oxen up the hill to market in the shadow of the old grey University of Perugia, we drove down into the Valley of the Tiber to see the wonderful Etruscan tomb close to Ponte San Giovanni, which was the burial-place of the Volumnii. It is of special interest not only for its excellent preservation, but because it belongs to the Roman-Etruscan period, and forms the connecting link between the old Etruscan tombs and the famous Roman sepulchres a mile or two outside Rome on the Latin Way.

A short descent took us into the subterranean vault at whose portal, cut out of the tufa rock, lay the ancient stone door, set aside now for a modern gate of iron. As we passed into the dark antechamber the chill damp air was cold as death after the cicala-haunted sunshine of the fields above. But while we strained our eyes to pierce the gloom the custode turned on an electric light hidden behind the cornice, and straightway we forgot everything in the wonder of the scene before us. In an inner chamber, resting upon their carved sarcophagi, we saw the inmates of the tomb grouped round the urn on which reposed the head of the house above two finely sculptured furies. On the coffered ceiling a gorgon's head, very terrible, with knotted snakes on its temples and horror in its face, stared down upon the dead. And as our eyes became accustomed to the dim light we discovered the strange symbolism of Etruria all round us. From the ceiling of the ante-chamber, on whose benches the relatives of the deceased reclined, to feast or watch beside their dead, little genii, exquisitely beautiful and light as butterflies, were hanging by the leaden chains by which they were suspended more than two thousand years ago. Over the doorway was a sun-disk, springing from the waves--fit emblem of the immortality of these Etruscans, springing from the waves of oblivion which for so many centuries washed over them. But there was none of the colour which makes beautiful the Tombs of Egypt, and there was hardly the same air of eternity. In the long corridors of the Royal Tombs of the Pharaohs there is an archaic defiance as of a life long since forgotten and lost in the dust of centuries. Here the life is of yesterday; we could almost hear the heart of Greece and Rome beating gaily in a young world, and the languid tread of the effete Etruscans, whose curious symbolism at once repels and mystifies, with its red lascivious serpents, its demons and furies, its beautiful and reluctant Medusas, and its solemn mockery of the feasting dead.

TODI

When I think of Todi the first things that I remember are the golden tassels of the corn against the sky, and the blue chicory which starred the dusty roadside as we drove to her from Perugia across the young Tiber. For little Todi, enthroned on her steep hill, has no railway within thirty-three miles of her gates; and if you do not wish to ravish the leagues which separate her from the world by motor, you can only reach her after many hours spent in the exquisite and touching beauty of the Umbrian Vale. She is one of those forgotten cities which are still to be found on the hills of Italy. The years have trampled lightly within her ancient walls; she has no trains, no jangling trams, very few motors except the grey automobile from Perugia which bursts noisily into the heart of her every day. She is a charmed city, whose name is painted on a signboard outside the gates lest the traveller should pass her by unwittingly. Within her walls we shook the dust of a work-a-day world from our feet, and forgot its turmoil in the music of her bells, which tell the passing hours with the loving persistence of those grown old in labour.

To many people Todi is a mere horizon of towers on the crest of a distant hill. To me she is the dwelling-place of happiness. And because I am a little jealous for Todi, and would have you love her as I loved her, having watched her grow in beauty as the miles decreased between us, I beg your patience while we thread the plain between Perugia and Tuder of the Umbrians.

It was a day of sun and shadow, an ideal morning for an expedition into Arcady, and we found the beauty of a young world down in the Valley of the Tiber. The jangle of harness-bells called us early from our breakfast, and the air was like wine cooled with snow as we drove down Perugia's four-mile hill, past her great churches, and on to the long white road where the vines are linked together for miles in festoons of archaic grace. The only people that we met were peasants toiling barefoot in the sun. Their olive skins were deepened to pomegranate; they had lithe figures; their finely moulded heads were set on long, slender necks; and when we saw them working under the olives, or coming towards us along the dusty road from some village fair, leading the milk-white oxen whose horns were bound with scarlet fillets, we knew that these were the ideal shepherds among whom the Gods of Greece were content to dwell. Their white homesteads rose from fields of maize and corn, and among the vineyards and olive-gardens were crops of tomatoes and hemp and pumpkins, and always figs and mulberries, for Umbria is the land of plenty, the home of Maia, and of Hermes,[6] her light-hearted son. The vines which linked the mountains to the plain had the beauty of a classic frieze, and when our eyes turned from the dappled hills we saw flowers weaving a multi-coloured web on the loom of dusty grass by the roadside--purple loosestrife and scabious, blue chicory, sugamele and rare borage, poppies and pink veronica, yellow spanocchi, dandelions, and golden broom. All the dyes of the East were woven there; and brambles and blossoming clematis stretched out long swaying arms towards the little shrines with which the fields were strewn, or twined a crown of flowers and thorns about the rust-worn symbols of the Passion on a lonely crucifix.

Little cities which had been hidden in the folds of the valley grew into our horizon--Torgiano, towering on our left, Deruta and Ripa Bianca. Our road, which had run in a straight line across the plain from the foot of Perugia's hill, crossed the Tiber on a bridge with a fifteenth-century gate-tower, and turned along the banks of the river. Tall Lombard poplars lingered on its brink, and peasant women in gay kerchiefs were washing linen in its green water. Across the valley we could see Perugia, most beautiful of all hill-cities, smiling in the sunshine, already far away; and in front across a sea of lesser hills rose Todi, perched on her mountain like a city in a fairy-tale, which surely could be reached by no other way than on the wings of a genie!

We rested our horses at Deruta, and clambered up into its precipitous streets. It is a mere hamlet, though a great deal of majolica has been made here for the last three hundred years, and it is extremely picturesque, perched high over the Tiber. Deruta is like a piece of its own pottery. It is built of gray stone, much the same colour as the unglazed plates which we saw drying on the walls, and its people dress in bright colours like the pigments on the finished ware. Every one goes barefoot here, and the old women toil up the steep stair-streets with their sandals slung over their arms, and huge bundles of sticks or fodder on their backs. And apart from its picturesqueness Deruta is well worth a visit for the sake of a beautiful fresco by Caporale in Sant'Antonio Abbate.

After Deruta the Umbrian Valley was all vineyards and olive-groves and fig-trees and acacias. Sometimes the Tiber was close beside us like a blue ribbon dividing us from the plain as we jangled through the cicala-haunted woods on the hillside; at others we could only trace it among the vineyards by the tall reedy poplars which followed its winding course.

The day grew hotter; the song of the cicalas swelled up like an anthem, and the butterflies drowsed upon the flowers. Presently we came to a wayside fountain, where a lovely girl with a jar of water poised on her head was talking to a young herdsman, beautiful as an Apollo, who was watering his oxen. There was a garden of ancient olives on the hillside above, and a welcome shade for our horses in the road. And because we had seen Todi on her hill, and that she was beautiful, we ate our lunch and took our siesta there under the olives in the scented air. Near at hand a boy was singing like a lover at his work; there were flowers at our feet, and cicalas fluting in the silver foliage overhead. The great white oxen were still drinking at the fountain, and their bells made pleasant music; sometimes a woman with a water-jar on her head came from the village, or a peasant rode by on his mule. It was a magic day. We had had so many hours of joy, so many hours of sun and wind and beautiful primitive things, that we had left care behind us. As we lay there on the soft earth and watched the cloud-shadows sweeping over the hills, we forgot the toil of life; we no longer heard the world throbbing its soul away in its great cities. The voice of the wind mingled with the shimmering music of summer--the insects, the song of the boy at work, and the bells of the oxen, in a paean of joy. For Umbria is like that garden in which Siddârtha dwelt with Yasôdara, shut off from all ugly and painful things. If you look deep enough you will assuredly find death, even as Siddârtha did--the hawk preying upon the small bird, the small bird upon the gnat, and you will see the sweat upon the oxen as they strain in the sun. You may find the world as sad a place, as full of pain and toil as he did, or you may find it just such a mirror of God's Love as did Francis, the chief of Umbrian saints. Here the butterflies seem to dance more gayly than they do elsewhere, the trees grow free, the flowers stretch upwards to the sun; no questions vex you when you see a wayside shrine. In the garden of Umbria there are only God and Nature, the Soul of Things is at ease.

So, with our hearts attuned to her simplicity, we came to Todi on the top of her hill, with her towers and walls, and her winds and clouds. We caught her asleep in the siesta hour. There was no one astir when we drove into her beautiful golden piazza, where the Middle Ages have never been forgotten: even to-day it is full of mediaeval grace, with its two great palaces and its exquisite cathedral. But if we had come to her in the busy morning stir of the market we could still have found the Middle Ages there, for the peasants ride in on the old leather saddles picked out in brass and scarlet that we see in fifteenth-century frescoes; the asses bear on panniers barrels, or huge bundles of rough wood; the mules are harnessed with bells and tassels, three abreast, so that they straggle across the narrow road as they strain up the hill, and all the women carry their marketing on their heads. The cathedral of Todi is one of the gems of Umbrian architecture. It is a great golden church with beautiful and very ancient doors, and an ornate rose window; it soars above the piazza on a wide flight of steps which not even a gigantic cinematograph advertisement can rob of dignity. Below its southern wall is a row of shabby little shops where the people sit at work in their doorways, but the northern side has flying buttresses and a cornice of fantastic heads of men and birds and beasts; and there is a pleasing baroque arch with shallow, grass-grown steps leading down to the piazza.

Like her cathedral Todi is full of quaint and beautiful things. She is an artist's city, solitary and beautiful, unexpectedly rich and frankly poor. Once away from her stately piazza with its three great buildings, which are like three jewels in the crown of King Cophetua's Beggar Maid, we found her humble and out of elbows. Her old brown houses bulged out over the steep little streets, or towered like lean fortresses on her city wall, with all manner of green things, even fig-trees, growing out of them. From below they seemed to be piled up one on the top of the other like children's bricks. The vineyards and olive-gardens, which swept up the hillside, forced entrances at every point; and on the crest of the hill among her palaces was one slender cypress spire, soaring up as though Nature herself must climb through this clear air to heaven. She had long avenues of acacias and flowering laurels, and ancient gateways like the Porta Aurea, through which we had a vista of mediaeval towers, and a Perugino landscape of green valleys with a river winding away to the amphitheatre of blue hills. Here and there in her walls were courses of splendid masonry, Umbrian perhaps, and on the eastern side of the town were four gigantic niches of a Roman basilica. But as in most Umbrian cities, it was the Middle Ages that left Todi her chief treasures, her stately palaces and her cathedral; and further down the hillside, on a flight of earthquake-riven steps, San Fortunato, which was the home of the Antipope Nicholas v. in the days when rebellious little Todi was a thorn in the side of the papacy, and Lewis of Bavaria made her his headquarters. Fra Jacopone of Todi, the author of _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_, is said to be buried in this church, but though we looked for it we could not find his tomb.

All these things count as nothing in the eyes of the Todesi, for Todi boasts a pilgrimage church; and a pilgrimage church, albeit of the sixteenth century, is an acquisition not to be despised by any city however ancient and picturesque. But in truth Santa Maria della Consolazione is a lovely church, a _capolavoro_ of architecture, and it soars up like a great golden gourd ripened to perfection on the green hillside. We came to it through the Porta Aurea along an avenue of flowering laurels, and its fair proportions gave us a complete sense of satisfaction. As we drew near, its clustered domes dwarfed the amphitheatre of hills. Inside it was airy and gracious, a bubble of light; but its sixteenth-century paganism, which is always the paganism of secular buildings rather than of temples, and its overgrown apostles in the niches that were meant for gods, spoilt its appeal, to the Protestant mind at any rate, as a house of prayer. What is it, I wonder, that makes it easy for the Protestant to worship in Gothic or Romanesque churches, and to respond to the appeal of basilicas like Santa Maria Maggiore or San Clemente in Rome, while sixteenth-century churches still remain the ideal ecclesiastical building to the majority of Roman Catholics? Is it that they all bear the image of St. Peter's and the Vatican in their minds? They argue that at least under the spacious cupolas of the renaissance they have light and space. And it is logic, for Gothic cathedrals are dim and full of shadows. But I could say my prayers more easily in the baths of Caracalla, where the sun slanting over the broken walls has a trick of making mist like floods of incense, and the birds chant all day long, than in St. Peter's, for all its fragrant services. And I doubt if any Catholics could be moved to such an ecstasy of worship in the dusk of Milan Cathedral, when the organ throbs through the aisles at Vespers, as we have seen them in many of the late pilgrimage churches of Italy, like Santa Maria of Todi or the great basilica of the Casa Santa at Loreto.

Like all the hill-cities of Umbria, one of Todi's chief charms is the beauty of her views. Below my bedroom window in the Hotel Risorgimento the old brown roofs of Todi clambered so eagerly down the slope that each one was at least two stories below the one above. Here and there were little gardens full of tamarisks and oleanders and morning glories. To the left rose San Fortunato, high on its broken flight of steps, like a grim fortress; and below it was the bastion of the public garden, with its round acacia trees which were always vibrant with the song of cicalas. In the deep valley were grey-towered farms with loggias and outside stairways, and a great fortified convent with the stations of the Cross climbing up to its gates in a cypress avenue. Through the midst the Tiber wound very slowly like a ribbon, and now the sunlight caught it, and we could see the blue water, and now we could only trace it by its tall Lombard poplars. But always it turned towards the distant hills which rose the one behind the other, fold on fold, and full of changing lights, towards Rome. At night it was still and mysterious. The steep hillside was wrapped in darkness. There was no moon, and though the sky was powdered thickly with stars they gave no light to see the valley by. Far below I could hear the humming of the night crickets; they sounded sleepy too. And up above, San Fortunato loomed almost transparently in the heavens, and the Milky Way shone like a mist of stars.

We found Arcady again down in the valleys as we drove back to Perugia across the Umbrian plain. There had been a fair at some neighbouring village, and the road was full of peasants coming back with cortèges of white oxen and calves, which had bells on their throats, and collars of scarlet and brass, and crimson fillets.

Perugia lay before us all the way, with her towers and majestic walls and the slim campanile of San Pietro, which looks like an obelisk from the plain. As we drove along the straight white road we saw the cities of the Valley of Spoleto rising like stars upon their hills. At each turn fresh mountains were disclosed with fresh cities on their skirts, pink in the evening sun. We were tired after the heat of the day, and silent. The harness-bells and the clipping sound of hoofs made an agreeable accompaniment to our thoughts. We climbed up slowly through the sunset, looking now at the hills, now at the olive-gardens that stretched away from the road, their leaves as silver as a flight of butterflies in the sunlight; now idly watching the long-legged shadows of the horses on the flowery bank. And all the way the cicalas were singing by the roadside, and we bore the memory of fragrant sunlit hours in our hearts. Half unconsciously, and like a message from the eternal hills, St. Paul's words came into my mind: 'Whatsoever thing is good, whatsoever thing is pure, whatsoever thing is lovely, whatsoever thing is of good report, if there be any virtue or if there be any truth, think on these things.' They were like an answer to the riddle which all men ask of Fate. But indeed in this Umbrian garden they are the text of everyday life, for in its byways it is easy to catch the spirit of St. Francis as he passed, barefoot and meanly clad, singing the praise of God and all His creatures.

As we drove up the last steep incline the plain was filled with light. Overhead the clouds were growing rosy. Assisi was a city of gold. And to the horizon rolled the Umbrian hills, purple and blue, and very far away like jade, airy and transparent, in the luminous space which Perugino loved to paint.

SIENA AND THE PALIO

It was the poet who persuaded us to go to Siena to see the Palio run in honour of Our Lady of Mid-August. We were still in Perugia enjoying the languid Umbrian summer, when he announced his intention of leaving the next day for Siena.

'What _is_ the Palio?' asked the philosopher. 'August will be very hot in Siena, and nothing could be more beautiful than this'--he waved his hand towards the white walls of Assisi, and the great dome of Santa Maria degli Angeli, floating like a lotus bud above the morning mists, which filled the valley between Perugia and Monte Subasio.

'It is so difficult to define,' said the poet. 'When you say, "What is the Palio?" you give me the wherewithal to write a book. If I told you that it was a race in honour of the Virgin Mary, ridden bareback round the chief piazza of Siena, by jockeys in mediaeval costume, who try to club each other off the course, you would probably prefer to stay here in Perugia. If I told you that it was a pageant you would be sure to say that you have seen better at Olympia.'

He was silent for a moment.

'But it is more than that. Imagine a city of Gothic palaces, a little flushed hill-city, sleeping among vineyards and olive-gardens, sleeping and sleeping like a girl bewitched. And then imagine the soul of her awaking for a few hours--a day perhaps--in the summer of the year. That is Siena, dear gay Siena, with her indomitable spirit and her fickle careless heart, with her pageants and her saints, and her allegiance to Madonna. For first and foremost Siena is the city of the Virgin Mary. There they think of her not only as the Mother of God, but as their own liege sovereign; even the Standard of the City, the black and white Balzana, is emblematic "of the purity and humility of the Virgin, or of those joyful and sorrowful mysteries whereby, as she told St. Bridget, her life was ever divided between happiness and grief."

'As for the Palio, if you would appreciate it you must understand something of the religion of the Middle Ages, which was at its best an inspiration, capable of producing St. Francis and St. Catherine, and at its worst a creed of superstitions which found vent in wild orgies of penance, and countenanced the crusade against the Albigenses. You must have thrilled to stories of wild games, like the Florentine Giuoco del Calcio or Perugia's Battaglia de' Sassi, in which the players lost their limbs and not infrequently their lives. And lastly, you must appreciate the intense patriotism which the men of Siena feel for their _contrade_, or divisions of the city, which I can best describe as parishes; though it is difficult to say whether, in the first place, the boundaries were parochial or military.

'It is not merely a pageant, though as a pageant it is superlative; it is the last flicker of the spirit of the Middle Ages. And for my part I love it, because the Sienese are still so mediaeval at heart. And that is why there is no city in Italy more fitted to be illumined by the torch of the Middle Ages than Siena. For Siena, notwithstanding the fact that she bred some of the greatest Renaissance popes, was comparatively untouched by the wave of paganism which swept over Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She still has whole streets of Gothic palaces; her saints are still reverenced with the almost child-like simplicity of the Middle Ages; she still boasts the special protection of the Blessed Virgin; and in the midst of all her fervour she still nurses her old feuds, not only with her ancient enemies, the Florentines, but between her own _contrade_.'

* * * * *

It was dark and the heavens were full of stars when we bade good-bye to our kind host of the Perugian inn, and boarded the electric tram that was to take us down to the station. We had chosen an early train so as to avoid travelling in the heat of the day, but we found the car already full of thrifty Italians bent on making hay before the sun shone.

We left at dawn, in the clear pale light which floods the Umbrian plain when the world is yet a little grey, and Perugia is nothing but a lovely outline on the crest of her hill. This is the light that Perugino loved, the shadowless herald of the day, full of the mystery of the morning. The world woke slowly from her pale slumber in the arms of night; the sky deepened from beryl to gold. We found Thrasymene illumined with rosy morning fires, her hills empurpled, and the towers of her little cities aflame with sunrise. It seemed as though immortal memories, great desires, and burnt-out passions struggled for utterance there. How Hannibal's tired eyes must have ached to possess so fair a land! Yet it is likely that he never saw the passionate dawn wooing the lake with plumes of rose and gold, as we did; for we know that on the fateful day when he waited to give battle to Flaminius by the shore of Thrasymene, the mists which did him such signal service filled up the hollow like a curtain hung from one range of mountains to the other.

So we came through Tuscany to Siena, and found her all agog with excitement for the Palio, with pennons flying and music echoing down her streets, and her inns already full to overflowing.

Ah, Siena, with your gaunt red palaces and your lily tower, and your ineffectual walls which thread the vineyards like old men dreaming life away in memories, it is you who are the heart of Tuscany! You are not pale and beautiful like Florence, not such a great lady; nor have you the silent grace of Pisa, but how lovable, how intimate you are! Their dignity would ill become you with your stormy and undignified past, of which De Commines said: 'La Ville est de tout temps en partialité, et se gouverne plus follement qu'aucune Ville d'Italie.'

But in no other place is the traveller welcomed with such song and laughter as in Siena, when she holds high festival. I, who have only seen her in her Palio days, cannot think that life is ever dull or languid in her streets and _piazze_. I have peopled her with mediaeval ghosts since that day in mid-August when I woke and found them in possession. At every sound of music I look round for silken banners, and pretty boys in doublet and hose escorting steel-clad warriors, or the gay spendthrifts of whom Folgore of San Gimignano sang. For on that day I caught a glimpse of the Middle Ages, with their knights and pages and their companies of men-at-arms. I heard the brave music of their drums, and saw the old Siena, ruddy and black-browed, clamouring loud-voiced in the Piazza del Campo--a happy child one moment, and the next a bundle of conflicting passions, remembering century-old grievances, and raking up dead feuds to make a Tuscan holiday.

It was in the Piazza del Campo, or to give it its modern name which does not please me half as much, the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, that I grew to know Siena best. Here she was the city of the Quattrocento, of which I love to dream, fantastic and beautiful, with untold possibilities lurking behind the walls of her tall red palaces. The Campo lies in the hollow where the three hills of Siena meet, and its shape is an irregular semi-circle. I can best describe it by saying that it is like an enormous cockle, slightly concave--rose-coloured, for it is paved with red brick--and with ribs or flutings of grey stone which converge towards the deepest hollow in front of the Palazzo Pubblico. Encircle this by a wide, flagged roadway, and ring it round with noble palaces, many of them of great beauty, with Gothic arch and lancet window. At the deepest hollow of the shell build up a palace for the rulers of the most unruly republic in the whole peninsula. Fashion it of exceeding beauty with a façade which follows the curve of the piazza. Build it of Siena's red brick; break its long lines with Gothic windows cloven by slender columns; grace it with magnificent arched doors; decorate it with scutcheons and crests; and high on its wall place the golden monogram of Holy Flame which Bernardino, Siena's gentlest saint, identified with his life. At its side build an arcaded chapel of white marble, stained by time, filled with the faded frescoes of Il Sodoma; and from this chapel picture yourself a tower, not like the tower of any city out of Tuscany, which springs up into the heavens with the natural grace of growing things, so that you do not think of it as brick or stone, but as some beautiful and splendid flower which grew up in one mediaeval night while Siena slept, and has blossomed ever since.

Even Florence cannot show the like of this. It is so beautiful and characteristic that it is worthy of mention beside the Piazzetta of St. Mark's at Venice. And at night it is a revelation of the Middle Ages to pass from the Via Cavour, with its lighted shops and its gay streams of men and women, into the dim and romantic Campo. Night covers the passing of time. The song and laughter of modern Sienese life, flowing down to the Lizza to promenade, comes like an echo across the years. It is very still in the Campo at night, and empty except perhaps for Beppo, the seller of water-melons, whose guttering candle suffices to show his pink and succulent wares. But one evening while we stood in the shadow of the Palazzo Comunale we heard some stray musicians singing an old choir-chant in the Via del Casato. It was as though the ghosts of pilgrims were toiling up the Via dei Pellegrini, just as they used to do, past the great ruined palace of Il Magnifico, to lay their troubles at the feet of the Queen of Sorrows. Overhead the Torre del Mangia, released from the shadows of the battlemented court, soared up to the stars more like a lily than ever with the moonlight silvering its machicolations. And we remembered that in the morning we had seen it with its head in the drifting clouds, and the sunlight below.

But it was not only for its mediaeval beauty that we loved the Campo. This is Siena's heart. Here she has fought and loved and hated and rejoiced, ay, and died too. And if her stones have been too often stained with blood in civil warfare she has gentler memories--here Provenzano Salvani, the victor of Monte Aperto, cast all dignity aside 'when at his glory's topmost height,' and begged for alms to ransom a friend who languished in some foreign prison; here Bernardino preached so eloquently of Divine Love that he almost moved the unregenerate young Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pius II., to repentance. And here, while the armies of Spain were beleaguering their city, and they were faint for food, the youths of Siena came to play their games till they were called back to guard the city walls, to the joy and amazement of Blaise de Montluc, the French Governor, who never tired of praising the Sienese for their chivalry and the courage and beauty of their women.

Here, too, in a few days' time, came Siena and all the strangers that were within her gates to see the Palio!

The _Prove_ were run first. Early in the week a sandtrack was prepared, and as if by magic an amphitheatre of seats sprang up round the piazza. There are six of these _prove_, or trial races, for the selection of horses for the Palio; and they are run on the evening of the 13th, the morning and evening of the two following days, and the morning of the 16th of August.[7] The Palio festivities really begin on the 13th of August, for although the Sienese do not attend the _prove_ in great numbers there are generally some thousand spectators who shout themselves hoarse with excitement; and feeling sometimes runs high when there is rivalry between ancient enemies like the _contrade_ of the Oca and the Torre.

On that morning, too, the streets are full of peasants driving their white oxen in pairs before them to the annual fair, which is still held outside the Porta Camollia in honour of our Lady of Mid-August. It has dwindled considerably from the seven days' _fiera_ which marked the occasion in the Middle Ages, but it is still a picturesque sight. The peasants drive standing up, like Roman charioteers, behind their milk-white steers, whose heads are bound with scarlet fillets, and their soft dewlaps girdled by a bell. The sellers of water-melons do a thriving business with the thirsty drovers, and the piazza is a sea of tossing horns and smooth white backs from the battlemented city wall to the column which marks the spot where Leonora of Portugal met her betrothed, the Emperor Frederick III.

On Sunday Siena was comparatively quiet, although there were _prove_ in the Piazza del Campo both morning and evening, and a general air of merriment throughout the city. We heard mass in the cathedral where the banners of the various _contrade_ hung from the piers of the nave; and the wonderful graffito pavement which, according to a seventeenth-century custom, is covered with boards for the rest of the year to preserve it from injury, was laid bare. And then we went down to Fontebranda to see how the _Contrada_ of the Oca, Saint Catherine's _contrada_, was preparing for the Palio. We found it delightfully confident of victory. The sacristan of Saint Catherine's house took us into the chapel which was once her father's workshop, and would not let us go until we had heard the history of the many Palii which the victorious Oca had won in past years--assisted no doubt by the prayers of Santa Caterina in heaven to the holy Mother of God.

The philosopher loves Fontebranda. To him it is the most romantic spot in Siena. It is certainly one of the most picturesque, whether you stand at the head of the steep Via Benincasa and see San Domenico's gaunt red walls towering above its houses, or whether you look towards the city from the church. A winding road leads up through gardens from the Valley of Fontebranda to the city gate. Above the wall tall, green-shuttered palaces rise tier on tier to the cathedral, whose delicately arcaded dome and tower crown the hill. To the right the loggia'd houses of the tanners sweep down the Via Benincasa to Fontebranda's mediaeval fountain; and the keen, unpleasant smell of the tanneries, which was one of the first things we noticed in Siena, is everywhere. Fontebranda is changed but little since the days when Saint Catherine lived there with her parents. Then as now it was full of tanneries, then as now the men worked half in their dark windowless shops and half out in the street: in her day the loggia'd houses were here; the yellow skins were drying in the road; and San Domenico, up whose hill she toiled to prayer, was the same grim fortress-church as now.

But I do not love Saint Catherine, her warlike spirit notwithstanding; nor do I love Sodoma's frescoes of her in the great church on the hill. And the Sienese themselves, though they give her great honour, do not seem to love her as they love the simple Bernardino. Splendid as her chapel is, magnificent as are her festas, she seems to be less in the imagination of Siena than Saint Bernardino, whose gentle life followed closely on hers as though the _genius loci_ dared not trust her unruly people through that stormy century without a guiding spirit. See on how many houses is his seal of holy Flame! And how brightly it burns on the Palazzo Pubblico, especially towards nightfall, when the setting sun gilds the façade and fires the sacred monogram.

'Respect is what we owe, love what we give.' And so I would leave the philosopher to St. Catherine and his Fontebranda, and come to San Francesco and the little chapel beside it where San Bernardino prayed. The Sienese have lavished lovely things upon this oratory of the ardent boy, who forsook all and followed Francis in the love of Christ. Sodoma, Pacchia and Beccafumi have glorified it, and peopled its walls with the beautiful and mystic-eyed women of the Renaissance. But though they have enriched it, I am glad that circumstance has kept St. Francis' great church as it was first conceived--a bare and solemn building--a church for the followers of the man who loved poverty and simplicity, because through them he saw the way to God. Even now I would have it cleared of its black and white Sienese stripings; but its wide empty nave, the noble chapels of its transepts, its ruined islands of fresco, its stillness and its great simplicity, make it beautiful.

San Francesco stands on the southern spur of the city, and from the ancient Porta Ovile in the valley below, a country road leads through gardens and cypress-woods to the Convent of the Osservanza, in which Pandolfo Petrucci the Magnificent, one of Siena's great failures, lies buried. The brother who took us over the church showed us the cell of Bernardino with its ancient wooden door nibbled almost to destruction by ardent pilgrims. And from a window in the old monastery we looked across the valley of pines and cypresses to Siena, painted against a glowing sunset sky. Seen thus across the fruitful Tuscan vale she was still the City Beautiful which inspired San Bernardino to a passion of eloquence on that long-distant summer day, early in the fifteenth century, when he climbed up into a tree and addressed the astonished multitudes 'in words so inflamed with divine love, that while many wept, there were some that deemed him mad.' Then as now her towers, though there were many more in Bernardino's city, were like the hands of suppliants held up to heaven; then as now the great dome and Campanile of Santa Maria Assunta set the seal of Madonna over her troubled people.

We looked long. In the church overhead the monks were intoning, and the song of the cicalas floated up from the fragrant cypress-woods as though they too were praising God. The sun went down, and little white wraiths of mist rose from the valley. The air blew chill. When we departed the monks had long ago ceased chanting, and the insects had folded their wings. But as we hastened through the vineyards where the mists fled from us like pale ghosts, the lights of the city twinkled a welcome to us through the gathering dusk. And so we came again into the warm heart of Siena.

* * * * *

Boom! Boom! Boom!

It was different from any other sound. At first I thought it was a part of my dreams, for it vibrated over the city like an orchestra of bells.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Then I remembered, and sprang out of bed. It was the 16th of August, the day of the Palio, and that deep music whose echoes were throbbing round the countryside was the voice of Siena waking from her long slumber. It was the first time that I had heard it, and my heart beat faster, for the tocsin of La Mangia is nearly always silent now, although it played such a great part in the mediaeval history of Siena when it used to call her citizens to arms in the name of God and the Virgin Mary!

My window looked down on a silent street winding between tall shuttered palaces. As a rule it was empty except for the milk-woman going from door to door in her big straw hat, and a worn-out Comacine lion which grinned sardonically at me from an ancient tower opposite. But to-day peasants were pouring up the hill--the men in their black wide-awakes and Sunday clothes, and the women, old and young alike, in their silly Tuscan hats which frivol with every breath of wind, and are never as becoming as the lovely head-kerchiefs of the Umbrians. They are worn on the backs of the heads; the soft brims, which are not wired, form an aureole of pale-coloured straw, and present a deliciously incongruous effect when they frame withered faces wrinkled like walnut-shells. I love the bent old women of Siena who look as if they had forgotten to be old with their ribbons and flowers and their coquettish young hats!

Yes, Siena was awaking from her slumber. I even fancied that there was a glint of suppressed laughter in the eye (he had only one eye, the other was filled with lichen) of my Comacine friend across the street. Already the city was like a hive, and the sound of a distant crowd was like the humming of many insects. Every inn had been full for days, and the people were still pouring in from all directions.

At nine o'clock we went to see the last of the _prove_ from the balcony which we had hired from that very agreeable haberdasher, Signor Tizzi, who has a shop almost opposite the Palazzo Comunale. It was hot, and the people down in the piazza were crowded together in the shade of the Torre del Mangia, which lay across the square like the shadow on a sundial. The whole scene was more like a dream than a real happening. In the dark cortile of the Palazzo Pubblico we could see the jockeys in fantastic parti-coloured suits, waiting for gun-fire; and the fierce white sunlight beat on the piazza, empty except for the chattering, gesticulating belt of humanity in the shadow of the Mangia.

Bang! went the gun. And with a rattle of drums the _fantini_ (jockeys) came out to run their mad race, to the accompaniment of the thunder of iron hoofs on baked sand, and the ceaseless shouting of the good Sienese.

After the excitement had subsided somewhat we pushed our way through the crowded streets to the cathedral. It was empty to-day, although yesterday, on the Festival of the Assumption, it had been full of glorious living colour. Then the Palio was hanging from the arch of the transept, and a great throng filled the aisle. Then, too, the miraculous Madonna delle Grazie, she to whom the distracted Sienese dedicated their city on the eve of Monte Aperto, was shown to the people; and the peasants, ever the last to lose faith, knelt at her shrine all day. As a rule I do not love the cathedral of Siena, notwithstanding its glorious pavement, and rich carving, and the Pisani's exquisite pulpit whose equal is not to be found in Italy. The great church's black and white stripings within and without make the eyes ache, and the over-elaborated façade is only beautiful by moonlight. But when High Mass is being celebrated with mediaeval splendour within its walls, and a great press throngs the aisles, it is bewilderingly rich. And we found it easy to forgive even the zebra stripings when we saw the poor people of the campagna praying to their miraculous Madonna behind the veil of sunlight which poured down from the clerestory and made a Holy of Holies of the Cappella del Voto.

That morning we paid another visit to the famous Library of the Duomo, which Francesco Piccolomini commissioned Pinturicchio to paint in honour of his uncle Aeneas Sylvius, for we could think of no better preparation for the Palio than studying this Quattrocento pageantry. We are told that in his contract Cardinal Francesco inserted a special clause, insisting that the Umbrian artist should use a certain quantity of gold and ultramarine and crimson in his decorations. And truly Pinturicchio has lavished colour on this splendid monument to the glories of the Humanist Pope, who was a typical expression of his age in everything, except in his great revival of the Middle Ages, when he tried to lead a crusade against the Turks. The room is full of sunlight and the sheen of gold and precious stones, and Pinturicchio seems to have caught the world in its morning, with gay youths and maidens walking on the flower-starred grass, and swift wild-geese high on the wing through the clear blue heavens. But except in the exquisite panel where the young Emperor meets his beautiful betrothed outside the Porta Camollia, he is not such a poet here as he is in the Appartamenti Borgia at Rome, though he is much gayer. All the more suited to Siena, whose art was summed up by Lanzi as 'lieta scuola fra lieto popolo'; forgetting, so it seems, the many Massacres of the Infants scattered by Matteo di Giovanni through the Sienese churches, which are revolting in their cruelty and ugliness!

By noon-time Siena was in a state of wild excitement. We had been warned that the Porcupine had a good chance of winning the race because its _contrada_ had drawn the horse which won the July Palio. So after lunch we drove down to Santa Maria dell'Istrice, which is a tiny church with a picturesque Renaissance belfry in the Via Camollia. There were flags in the Via Cavour, and the great Palazzo Salimbeni was hung with banners, and had velvet cloths embroidered with the crest of the Montone hanging from its Gothic windows. The torch-rests and banner-holders in the public squares each carried the proud silken banners of their _contrade_, and the whole city masqueraded under their different emblems--now the Giraffe, scarlet and white; further on the Caterpillar, green and yellow and blue; then the Dragon and the Wolf; and, at last, the Porcupine.

In the chapel we found three men at arms and two _alfieri_ in parti-coloured hose and jerkins of magenta velvet, slashed with black and white. Orestes, the _fantino_, was padding his helmet in the little cupboard of a sacristy. He was a tall, blue-eyed man, and looked superb in his bravery of velvet and satin and lace, with long-toed velvet boots and shining helmet. He showed us the heavy wooden jockey cap with painted colours which he was to wear in the race, to protect his head from the blows of the other _fantini_; and, as he told us with a shrug, he expected some, because, thanks to Saint Anthony, his horse was undoubtedly the best, and every one expected him to win.

The poor Captain who was to head the cortège was in a wretched plight. He was being girded into his armour, and it was not a dignified process. The day was hot, and the chain mail would not meet. Eventually some one lent him a boot-lace or a piece of string, I forget which, and we left him, to see the _alfieri_[8] tossing their banners out in the street.

After a long delay the knight appeared, looking as dignified and composed as if he had been wrestling in the spirit rather than in the flesh before the altar of his chapel. And while the procession was forming up we drove on to San Pietro della Magione, where the Horse of the Porcupine is always blessed. The Via Camollia, although it is one of the main streets of Siena, is so narrow here that we had perforce to drive past La Magione to the city gates, where it widens out into a piazza, before we could turn and so drive back again.

La Magione has a flight of steps leading up to a terrace. It is a very ancient church, brown and shabby, and many a Templar's horse has champed at the foot of these same steps while his master prayed within; and, it may be, shared his blessing before they started out on the crusade.

With a rattle of drums our friends of the Porcupine came up the narrow street. Everything was done with such natural grace and pomp. First the tossing of banners round the ancient well-head before the presbytery, and then the little service which ended in the Blessing of the Horse. The animal was led to the foot of the steps, and the old priest after saying a prayer sprinkled him with Holy Water. He was a dear, intelligent beast, and behaved to the manner born. He pricked his ears at the prayer, and though he tried to walk up the steps, and sniffed inquisitively at the censer, he did not even sneeze while lie was being sprinkled. Indeed I have seen the part played worse by many a Christian.