r it was the eve of the Ascension,
when every contadino lights a beacon of chestnut logs and straw and
piled-up leaves. Each castello on the plain, each village on the hills,
each lonely farmhouse at the skirt of forest or the edge of lake,
smouldered like a red Cyclopean eye beneath the vault of stars. The
flames waxed and waned, leapt into tongues, or disappeared. As they
passed from gloom to brilliancy and died away again, they seemed almost
to move. The twilight scene was like that of a vast city, filling the
plain and climbing the heights in terraces. Is this custom, I thought, a
relic of old Pales-worship?

III.

The early history of Montepulciano is buried in impenetrable mists of
fable. No one can assign a date to the foundation of these high-hill
cities. The eminence on which it stands belongs to the volcanic system
of Monte Amiata, and must at some time have formed a portion of the
crater which threw that mighty mass aloft. But aeons have passed since
the _gran sasso di Maremma_ was a fire-vomiting monster, glaring like
Etna in eruption on the Tyrrhene sea; and through those centuries how
many races may have camped upon the summit we call Montepulciano!
Tradition assigns the first quasi-historical settlement to Lars Porsena,
who is said to have made it his summer residence, when the lower and
more marshy air of Clusium became oppressive. Certainly it must have
been a considerable town in the Etruscan period. Embedded in the walls
of palaces may still be seen numerous fragments of sculptured
bas-reliefs, the works of that mysterious people. A propos of
Montepulciano's importance in the early years of Roman history, I
lighted on a quaint story related by its very jejune annalist, Spinello
Benci. It will be remembered that Livy attributes the invasion of the
Gauls, who, after besieging Clusium, advanced on Rome, to the
persuasions of a certain Aruns. He was an exile from Clusium; and
wishing to revenge himself upon his country-people, he allured the
Senonian Gauls into his service by the promise of excellent wine,
samples of which he had taken with him into Lombardy. Spinello Benci
accepts the legend literally, and continues: "These wines were so
pleasing to the palate of the barbarians, that they were induced to quit
the rich and teeming valley of the Po, to cross the Apennines, and move
in battle array against Chiusi. And it is clear that the wine which
Aruns selected for the purpose was the same as that wh