and all the birds to fly. And you cannot tell, unless you
have been born to do it as I was, how good it is to climb and climb and
climb, and see the green earth grow pale beneath you, and the people
dwindle till they are small as dust, and the houses fade till they seem
like heaps of sand. The air gets so clear around you, and the great
black wings flap close against your face; and you sit astride where the
bells are, with some quaint stone face beside you that was carved on the
pinnacle here a thousand years and more ago, and has hardly been seen of
man ever since; and the white clouds are so near you that you seem to
bathe in them; and the winds toss the trees far below, and sweep by you
as they go down to torment the trees and the sea, the men that work, and
the roofs that cover them, and the sails of their ships in the ocean.
Men are so far from you, and heaven seems so near! The fields and the
plains are lost in the vapors that divide you from them, and all their
noise of living multitudes comes very faintly to your ear, and sweetly
like the low murmuring of bees in the white blossoms of an acacia in the
month of May.

But you do not understand, you poor toilers in cities who pace the
street and watch the faces of the rich.

I was to be a notary's clerk--I, called Pipistrello (the bat) because I
was always whirling and wheeling in air. I was to be a clerk, so my
mother and grandmother decided for me, with the old notary himself who
lived at the corner, and made his daily bread by carrying fire and sword
where he could through the affairs of his neighbors. He was an old
rascal, but my mother did not know that: he promised to be a safe and
trustworthy guardian of my youth, and she believed he had power to keep
me safe from all dangers of destiny. She wanted to be sure that I should
never run the risks of my father's career: she wanted to see me always
before the plate of herb soup on her table. Poor mother!

One day in Orte chance gave me another fate than this of her desires.

One fine sunrise on the morning of Palm Sunday I heard the sharp sound
of a screeching fife, the metallic clash of cymbals, the shouts of boys,
the rattle of a little drum. It was the rataplan beating before a troop
of wrestlers and jugglers who were traversing the Marche and Reggio
Emilia. The troop stationed themselves in a little square burnt by the
sun and surrounded by old crumbling houses: I ran with the rest of the
lads of Orte to s