ings of screaming lips, where
rows of teeth gleamed white like the teeth of enraged beasts of prey,
and in a moment of ecstasy he spread out his arms toward heaven and
laughed. Then he stepped down, and his people raised their banners with
the rain of fire and their empty black crosses, and crowded their way
out of the church and again passed singing across the square and again
through the opening of the tower-gate.

And those of Old Bergamo stared after them, as they went down the
mountain. The steep road, lined by walls, was misty in the light of the
sun setting beyond the plain, but on the red wall encircling the city
the shadows of the great crosses which swayed from side to side in the
crowd stood out black and sharply outlined.

Further away sounded the singing; one or another of the banners still
gleamed red out of the new town's smoke-blackened void; then they
disappeared in the sun-lit plain.

THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ROSES

There should have been roses

Of the large, pale yellow ones.

And they should hang in abundant clusters over the garden-wall,
scattering their tender leaves carelessly down into the wagon-tracks on
the road: a distinguished glimmer of all the exuberant wealth of flowers
within.

And they should have the delicate, fleeting fragrance of roses, which
cannot be seized and is like that of unknown fruits of which the senses
tell legends in their dreams.

Or should they have been red, the roses?

Perhaps.

They might be of the small, round, hardy roses, and they would have to
hang down in slender twining branches with smooth leaves, red and fresh,
and like a salutation or a kiss thrown to the wanderer, who is walking,
tired and dusty, in the middle of the road, glad that he now is only
half a mile from Rome.

Of what may he be thinking? What may be his life?

And now the houses hide him, they hide everything on that side. They
hide one another and the road and the city, but on the other side there
is still a distant view. There the road swings in an indolent, slow
curve down toward the river, down toward the mournful bridge. And behind
this lies the immense Campagna. The gray and the green of such large
plains.... It is as if the weariness of many tedious miles rose out of
them and settled with a heavy weight upon one, and made one feel lonely
and forsaken, and filled one with desires and yearning. So it is much
better that one should take one's ease here in a corner between