him if for
the salvation of his soul he never thought to turn monk. "No," says he,
"for to me it will be strange if Fra Nazarene should go to Paradise and
Ugguccione della Faggiuola to Hell." And Macchiavelli says that what was
most remarkable was that, "having equalled the great actions of
Scipio and Philip, the father of Alexander, he died as they did, in the
forty-fourth year of his age, and doubtless he would have surpassed them
both had he found as favourable dispositions at Lucca as one of them did
in Macedon and the other in Rome." Just there we seem to find the desire
of the sixteenth century for unity that found expression in the deeds of
Cesare Borgia, the Discorsi of Niccolo Macchiavelli.

[Illustration: THE TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARETTO

_By Jacopo della Quercia. Duomo, Lucca_

_Brogi_]

The rest of the history of Lucca is a sort of unhappy silence, out of
which from time to time rise the cry of Burlamacchi, a fool, yes, but a
hero, the howling of the traitors, the whisper of feeble conspiracies,
the purr of an ignoble prosperity, till in 1805 Napoleon came and made
her his prey.

II

But to-day Lucca is like a shadowy pool hidden behind the Pisan hills,
like a forgotten oasis in the great plain at the foot of the mountains,
a pallid autumn rose, smiling subtly among the gardens that girdle her
round about with a sad garland of green, a cincture of silver, a tossing
sea of olives. However you come to her, you must pass through those
delicate ways, where always the olives whisper together, and their
million leaves, that do not mark the seasons, flutter one by one to the
ground; where the cicale die in the midst of their song, and the flowers
of Tuscany scatter the shade with the colours of their beauty. In the
midst of this half-real world, so languidly joyful, in which the sky
counts for so much, it is always with surprise you come upon the
tremendous perfect walls of this city--walls planted all round with
plane-trees, so that Lucca herself is hidden by her crown--a crown that
changes as the year changes, mourning all the winter long, but in spring
is set with living emeralds, a thousand and a thousand points of green
fire that burst into summer's own coronet of flame-like leaves, that
fades at last into the dead and sumptuous gold of autumn.

It is by Porta S. Pietro that we enter Lucca, coming by rail from
Pistoja, and from Pisa too, then crossing La Madonnina and Corso
Garibaldi by Via Nazionale,