f which, as by a miracle will pass the endless thread of
an immortal life?

So I came to Pontassieve, crossing the river again where the road begins
to leave it. There is nothing good to say of Pontassieve, which has no
beauty in itself, and where folk are rough and given to robbery. A
glance at the inn--for so they call it--and I passed on, glad in my
heart that I had dined in the fields. A mile beyond the town, on the Via
Aretina, the road of the Consuma Pass leaves the highway on the left,
and by this way it is good to go into Casentino; for any of the inns in
the towns of the valley will send to Pontassieve to meet you, and it is
better to enter thus than by railway from Arezzo. However, I was for
Vallombrosa; so I kept to the Aretine way. I left it at last at S.
Ellero, whence the little railway climbs up to Saltino, passing first
through the olives and vines, then through the chestnuts, the oaks, and
the beeches, till at last the high lawns appeared, and evening fell at
the last turn of the mule path over the hill as I came out of the forest
before the monastery itself, almost like a village or a stronghold, with
square towers and vast buildings too, fallen, alas! from their high
office, to serve as a school of forestry, an inn for the summer visitor
who has fled from the heat of the valleys. And there I slept.

It is best always to come to any place for the first time at evening or
even at night, and then in the morning to return a little on your way
and come to it again. Wandering there, out of the sunshine, in the
stillness of the forest itself, with the ruin of a thousand winters
under my feet, how could I be but angry that modern Italy--ah, so small
a thing!--has chased out the great and ancient order that had dwelt here
so long in quietness, and has established after our pattern a
utilitarian school, and thus what was once a guest-house is now a
pension of tourists. But in the abbey itself I forgot my anger, I was
ashamed of my contempt of those who could do so small a thing. This
place was founded because a young man refused to hate his enemy; every
stone here is a part of the mountain, every beam a tree of the forest,
the forest that has been renewed and destroyed a thousand times, that
has never known resentment, because it thinks only of life. Yes, this is
no place for hatred; since he who founded it loved his enemies, I also
will let them pass by, and since I too am of that company which thinks
only of