wed me a
regal kind of a room where a bed with great hangings invited repose.

All my days of marching, the dirty inns, the forests, the nights
abroad, the cold, the mists, the sleeplessness, the faintness, the
dust, the dazzling sun, the Apennines--all my days came over me, and
there fell on me a peaceful weight, as his two hundred years fell upon
Charlemagne in the tower of Saragossa when the battle was done; after
he had curbed the valley of Ebro and christened Bramimonde.

So I slept deeply all day long; and, outside, the glare made a silence
upon the closed shutters, save that little insects darted in the outer
air.

When I woke it was evening. So well had they used me that I paid what
they asked, and, not knowing what money remained over, I left their
town by the southern gate, crossed the railway and took the road.

My way lay under the flank of that mountain whereby the Luccans cannot
see Pisa, or the Pisans cannot see Lucca--it is all one to me, I shall
not live in either town, God willing; and if they are so eager to
squint at one another, in Heaven's name, cannot they be at the pains
to walk round the end of the hill? It is this laziness which is the
ruin of many; but not of pilgrims, for here was I off to cross the
plain of Arno in one night, and reach by morning the mouth and gate of
that valley of the Elsa, which same is a very manifest proof of how
Rome was intended to be the end and centre of all roads, the chief
city of the world, and the Popes' residence--as, indeed, it plainly is
to this day, for all the world to deny at their peril, spiritual,
geographical, historical, sociological, economic, and philosophical.

For if some such primeval and predestinarian quality were not inherent
in the City, how, think you, would the valley of the Serchio--the hot,
droughty, and baking Garfagnana--lead down pointing straight to Rome;
and how would that same line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting
it exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa, itself leading up
directly towards Rome? I say, nowhere in the world is such a
coincidence observable, and they that will not take it for a portent
may go back to their rationalism and consort with microbes and make
their meals off logarithms, washed down with an exact distillation of
the root of minus one; and the peace of fools, that is the deepest and
most balmy of all, be theirs for ever and ever.

Here again you fall into errors as you read, ever expect