n city with nothing really between it and the Atlantic.
In Massa these prisoners and captives can see the sea and the great
mountains, and must often hear the piping of those who wander freely in
the woods. Even in Italy, it seems, where the criminal is beginning to
be understood as a sick person, they have not yet contrived to banish
the older method of treatment: as who should say, you are ill and
fainting with anaemia, come let me bleed you.

It is at Massa that on your way south you come again into the highroad
from Genoa to Pisa, for while, having left it at Spezia, you found it
again at Sarzana, it was a by-road that led you to Carrara and again to
Massa Ducale. Now, though the way you seek be the highway of the
pilgrims, it is none the better as a road for that. For the wagons
bringing marble to the cities by the way have spoiled it altogether, so
that you find it ground with ruts six inches deep and smothered in dust;
therefore, if you come by carriage, and still more if you be _en
automobile_, it is necessary to go warily. On foot nothing matters but
the dust, and if you start early from Massa that will not annoy you, for
in the early morning, for some reason of the gods, the dust lies on the
highway undisturbed, while by ten o'clock the air is full of it. It is a
bad road then all the way to Pietrasanta, but most wonderful and lovely
nevertheless. For the most part the sea is hidden from you, for you are
in truth on the sea-shore, though far enough from the waves, a land of
fields and cucumbers coming between road and water. Swinging along in
the dawn, you soon pass that old castle of Montignoso, crumbling on its
high rock, built by the Lombard Agilulf to hold the road to Italy. Then
not without surprise you pass quite under an old Albergo which crosses
the way, where certainly of old the people of Massa took toll of the
Tuscans, and the Tuscans taxed all who came into their country. Then the
road winds through a gorge beside a river, and at last between delicious
woods of olives full of silver and golden shade most pleasant in the
heat, past Seravezza in the hills, you come to the little pink and white
town of Pietrasanta under the woods, at noon.

Pietrasanta is set at the foot of the Hills of Paradise, littered with
marble, planted with figs and oleanders, full of the sun. For hours you
may climb among the olives on the hills, terraced for vines, shimmering
in the heat; and resting there, watch the sleepy s