ld and miserable place, full of
poor and rebellious people, who eye you with suspicion and a sort of
envy. Yet in spite of the proclamation of their wretchedness, I think of
them now in London, as fortunate. At least upon them the sun will
surely shine in the morning, the unsullied infinite night will fall;
while for us there is no sun, and in the night the many are too unhappy
to remember even that. There in Pontedera they preach their socialism,
and none is too miserable to listen; these poor folk have been told they
are unhappy, and, indeed, Pontedera is not beautiful. Yet on a market
day you may see the whole place transformed. It has an aspect of joy
that lights up the dreary street. All day on Friday you may watch them
at their little stalls, which litter Via Pisana and make it impassable.
You might think you were at a fair, but that a fair in England, at any
rate, is not so gay. All along the highway that runs through the town in
front of the shops and the inn you see the stalls of the crockery
merchants, of the dealers in lace and stuffs, of those who sell macaroni
and pasti, and of those who sell mighty umbrellas. And it is then, I
think, that Pontedera is at her best; life which ever contrives in Italy
to keep something of a gay sanity, disposing for that day at least of
the surliness of this people, who are very poor, and far from any great
city.

As for me, I left Pontedera with all speed, being intent on Vico Pisano,
a fortress built by Filippo Brunellesco for the Republic of Florence,
after the fall of the old Pisan Rocca of Verruca, on the hill-top.
There, too, if we may believe Villani,[83] the Marchese Ugo founded a
monastery. To-day on Monte della Verruca there is nothing remaining of
the Rocca, and the monastery is a heap of stones; but in Vico Pisano the
fortifications and towers of Brunellesco still stand, battered though
they be,--gaunt and bitter towers, their battlements broken, the walls
that the engines of old time have battered, hung now with ivy, over
which, all silver in the wind, the ancient olive leans.

Here, where the creeping ivy has hidden the old wounds, and the
oleanders speak of the living, and the lilies remind us of the dead, let
us, too, make peace in our hearts and suffer no more bitterness for the
fallen, nor think hardly of the victor. Florence, too, in her turn
suffered slavery and oblivion; and from the same cause as her own
victims, because she would not be at peace. If Pi