saint's day,
and there were many booths full of fruits, agricultural implements,
toys, clothes, wooden ware, and the like. There was a great crowd
and a noise, but, according to the mysterious Italian custom, nobody
seemed to be buying or selling. I am in the belief that a small
purchase of grapes we made here on our return was the great
transaction of the day, unless, indeed, the neat operation in alms
achieved at our expense by a mendicant villager may be classed
commercially.

When we turned off from the Rovigo road at Battaglia we were only
three miles from Arqua.

II.

Now, all the way from this turning to the foot of the hill on which
the village was stretched asleep in the tender sunshine, there was on
either side of the road a stream of living water. There was no other
barrier than this between the road and the fields (unless the vines
swinging from tree to tree formed a barrier), and, as if in graceful
excuse for the interposition of even these slender streams, Nature
had lavished such growth of wild flowers and wild berries on the banks
that it was like a garden avenue, through the fragrance and beauty of
which we rolled, delighted to silence, almost to sadness.

When we began to climb the hill to Arqua, and the driver stopped to
breathe his horse, I got out and finished the easy ascent on foot. The
great marvel to me is that the prospect of the vast plain below, on
which, turning back, I feasted my vision, should be there yet, and
always. It had the rare and saddening beauty of evanescence, and awoke
in me the memory of all beautiful scenery, so that I embroidered the
landscape with the silver threads of western streams, and bordered it
with Ohio hills. Ohio hills? When I looked again it was the storied
Euganean group. But what trans-oceanic bird, voyaging hither, dropped
from its mouth the blackberry which took root and grew and blossomed
and ripened, that I might taste Home in it on these classic hills?

I wonder did Petrarch walk often down this road from his house just
above? I figured him coming to meet me with his book in his hand, in
his reverend poetic robes, and with his laurel on, over that curious
kind of bandaging which he seems to have been fond of--looking, in a
word, for all the world like the neuralgic Petrarch in the pictures.

Drawing nearer, I discerned the apparition to be a robeless, laureless
lout, who belonged at the village inn. Yet this lout, though not
Petrarch, had merits