Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa Part 26

"O Rondinella che pa.s.si monti e colli, Se trovi l'amor mio, digli che venga; E digli: son rimasta in questi poggi Come rimane la smarrita agnella.

E digli: son rimasta senza nimo Come l'albero secco senza 'l cimo.

E digli: son rimasta senza damo, Come l'albero secco senza il ramo.

E digli: son rimasta abbandonata Come l'erbetta secca in sulle prata."

At length she sends a letter with the help of the village scrivener, and in time gets an answer--

"Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano; Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia.

A me mi pare un poeta sovrano Tanto gli e sperto nella poesia ..."

Signor Tigri in his excellent collection of _Canti Toscani_, from which I have quoted, gives some examples too of these letters and their replies, but they are too long to set down here.

With spring the lover returns. You may see the girls watching for the lads any day of spring in those high far woods through which the roads wind down to the plains.

"Eccomi, bella, che son gia venuto Che li sospiri tuoi m'hanno chiamato, E tu credevi d'avermi perduto, Dal ben che ti volevo son tornato.

Quando son morto, mi farai un gran pianto; Dirai: e morto chi mi amava tanto!

Quando son morto, un gran pianto farai, Padrona del mio cor sempre sarai."

Then in the early summer days the promises are given, and long and long before autumn the good priest marries Beppino to his Annuziatina, and doubtless they live happy ever after in those quiet and holy places.

It is into this country of happiness you come, a happiness so vaguely musical, when, leaving Lucca in the summer heat, you climb into the Garf.a.gnana. For to your right Bagni di Lucca lies under Barga, with its church and great pulpit; and indeed, the first town you enter is Borgo a Mozzano by Serchio; then, following still the river, you come to Gallicano, and then by a short steep road to Castelnuovo di Garf.a.gnana at the foot of the great pa.s.s. The mountains have cl.u.s.tered round you, bare and threatening, and though you be still in the woods it is their tragic nudity you see all day long, full of the disastrous gestures of death, that can never change or be modified or recalled. It is under these lonely and desolate peaks that the road winds to Piazza al Serchio.

Castelnuovo is a little city caught in a bend of Serchio, which it spans by a fantastic high bridge that leaps across the shrunken torrent. A mere huddle of mediaeval streets and piazzas in an amphitheatre of mountains, its one claim on our notice is that here is a good inn, kept by a strange tragical sort of man with a beautiful wife, the only sunshine in that forbidding place. She lies there like a jewel among the inhuman rocks, and Serchio for ever whispers her name. Here too, doubtless, came Ariosto, most serene of poets, when in 1522 he was sent to suppress an insurrection in the Garf.a.gnana. But even Ariosto will not keep you long in Castelnuovo, since she whom he would certainly have sung, and whose name you will find in his poem, cannot hold you there.

So you follow the country road up stream, a laughing, leaping torrent in September, full of stones longing for rain, towards Camporgiano.

It is very early in the morning maybe, as you climb out of the shadow and receive suddenly the kiss of the morning sun over a shoulder of the great mountains, a kiss like the kiss of the beloved. From the village of Piazza al Serchio, where the inn is rough truly but _pulito_, it is a climb of some six chilometri into the pa.s.s, where you leave the river, then the road, always winding about the hills, runs level for four miles, and at last drops for five miles into Fivizzano. All the way the mountains stand over you frighteningly motionless and threatening, till the woods of Fivizzano, that magical town, hide you in their shadow, and evening comes as you climb the last hill that ends in the Piazza before the door of the inn.

Here are hospitality, kindness, and a welcome; you will get a great room for your rest, and the salone of the palace, for palace it is, for your sojourn, and an old-fashioned host whose pleasure is your comfort, who is, as it were, a daily miracle. He it will be who will make your bed in the chamber where Grand Duke Leopold slept, he will wait upon you at dinner as though you were the Duke's Grace herself, and if your sojourn be long he will make you happy, and if your stay be short you will go with regret. For his pride is your delight, and he, unlike too many more famous Tuscans, has not forgotten the past. Certainly he thinks it not altogether without glory, for he has carved in marble over your bed one of those things which befell in his father's time. Here it is--

"Qui stette per tre giorni Nel Settembre del MDCCCx.x.xII Leopoldo Il Granduca di Toscana E i fratelli Cojari da Fivizzano L'imagine dell' Ottimo Principi vi possero Perche rimanesse ai posteri memoria Che la loro casa fu n.o.bilitata Dalle presenza dell' ospite augusto."

But nature had enn.o.bled the House of Cojari already. There all day long in the pleasant heat the fountain of Cosimo in plays in the Piazza outside your window, cooling your room with its song. And, indeed, in all Tuscany it would be hard to find a place more delightful or more lovely in which to spend the long summer that is so loath to go here in the south. Too soon, too soon the road called me from those meadows and shadowy ways, the never-ending whisper of the woods, the sound of streams, the song of the mountain shepherd girls, the quiet ways of the hills.

It was an hour after sunrise when I set out for Fosdinovo of the Malaspina, for Sarzana, for Spezia, for England. The way lies over the rivers Aulella and Bardine, through Soliero in the valley, through Ceserano of the hills. Thence by a way steep and dangerous I came into the valley of Bardine, only to mount again to Tendola and at last to Foce Cuccu, where on all sides the valleys filled with woods fell away from me, and suddenly at a turning of the way I spied out Fosdinovo, lordly still on its bastion of rock, guarding Val di Magra, looking towards Luna and the sea.

Little more than an eyrie for eagles, Fosdinovo is an almost perfect fortress of the Middle Age. It glowers in the sun like a threat over the ways that now are so quiet, where only the bullocks dragging the marble from Carrara pa.s.s all day long from Ma.s.sa to Spezia, from the valley to the sea.

It was thence for the first time for many months I looked on a land that was not Tuscany. Already autumn was come in that high place; a flutter of leaves and the wind of the mountains made a sad music round about the old walls, which had heard the voice of Castruccio Castracani, whose gates he had opened by force. And then, as I sat there above the woods towards evening, from some bird pa.s.sing overhead there fell a tiny feather, whiter than snow, that came straight into my hand. Was it a bird, or my angel, whose beautiful, anxious wings trembled lest I should fall in a land less simple than this?