inks 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 MDCCCXXXII
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 nobilitata
Dalle presenza dell' ospite augusto."

But nature had ennobled 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 pass all day long from Massa 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 passing 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 sh