es V did that.

[138] In the Middle Age, Cortona and Arezzo were not on the road to
Rome, but so far as Florence was concerned, Siena, her holding that she
acquired these cities to keep Via Aretina open. Cf. Repetti, v. 715.

[139] That Pistoja was not on the great Via Francesca goes for nothing,
she threatened it.

[140] There is a most excellent little book, _Nuova Guida di Pistoja_,
by Cav. Prof. Giuseppe Tigri (Pistoja, 1896), which I strongly recommend
to the reader's notice. I wish to acknowledge my debt to it. Unlike so
many guides, it is full of life itself, and makes the city live for us
also.

[141] Bestia, probably a nickname of Vanni Fucci's; cf. _Inferno_, xxiv,
125.

[142] _Inferno_, xxiv. 125, 126; xxv. 13, 14.

[143] "Cino impugns the verdicts of Dante's _Commedia_," a sonnet
translated by D.G. Rossetti.

_Note_.--No English writers have written well of Pistoja, for first they
always write from a Florentine point of view, and then they quit too
soon. I plead guilty too. The key-note to Pistoja is given in that
saying of Macchiavelli's, that the Florentine people "per fuggire il
nome di crudele lascio distruggere Pistoia." Il Principe, cap. xvii. Cf.
also Discorsi iii. 27. It is, of course, all a matter of Panciatichi and
Cancellieri. Cf. Zdekauer Statuti Pistoiesi dei Secoli xii. e xiii.

XXIX. LUCCA

Who that has ever seen the Pistojese the Val di Lima, the country of S.
Marcello, the Val di Reno, the country about Pracchia, does not love
it--the silent ways through the chestnut woods, the temperance of the
hill country after the heat of the cities, the country ways after the
ways of the town? And there are songs there too. But to-day my way lies
through the valley, Val di Nievole, towards Lucca, lost in the plain at
the gate of the Garfagnana. Serravalle, with its old gateway and high
Rocca, which fell to Castruccio Castracani; Monsummano, far on the left,
with its old church in the valley; Montecatini, with its mineral
springs; Buggiano, and Pescia with its mulberries, where the Church of
S. Francesco hides and keeps its marvellous portrait of S.
Francesco--these are the towns at the foot of the mountains that I shall
pass before I turn into the plain between the island hills and come at
last to Lucca, Lucca l'Ombrosa, round whose high ramparts that have
stood a thousand sieges now in whispering ranks there stand the cool
planes of the valley, the shadowy trees that girdle the city