long, full of the disastrous gestures of
death, that can never change or be modified or recalled. It is under
these lonely and desolate peaks that the road winds to Piazza al
Serchio.

Castelnuovo is a little city caught in a bend of Serchio, which it spans
by a fantastic high bridge that leaps across the shrunken torrent. A
mere huddle of mediaeval streets and piazzas in an amphitheatre of
mountains, its one claim on our notice is that here is a good inn, kept
by a strange tragical sort of man with a beautiful wife, the only
sunshine in that forbidding place. She lies there like a jewel among the
inhuman rocks, and Serchio for ever whispers her name. Here too,
doubtless, came Ariosto, most serene of poets, when in 1522 he was sent
to suppress an insurrection in the Garfagnana. But even Ariosto will not
keep you long in Castelnuovo, since she whom he would certainly have
sung, and whose name you will find in his poem, cannot hold you there.
So you follow the country road up stream, a laughing, leaping torrent in
September, full of stones longing for rain, towards Camporgiano.

It is very early in the morning maybe, as you climb out of the shadow
and receive suddenly the kiss of the morning sun over a shoulder of the
great mountains, a kiss like the kiss of the beloved. From the village
of Piazza al Serchio, where the inn is rough truly but _pulito_, it is a
climb of some six chilometri into the pass, where you leave the river,
then the road, always winding about the hills, runs level for four
miles, and at last drops for five miles into Fivizzano. All the way the
mountains stand over you frighteningly motionless and threatening, till
the woods of Fivizzano, that magical town, hide you in their shadow, and
evening comes as you climb the last hill that ends in the Piazza before
the door of the inn.

Here are hospitality, kindness, and a welcome; you will get a great room
for your rest, and the salone of the palace, for palace it is, for your
sojourn, and an old-fashioned host whose pleasure is your comfort, who
is, as it were, a daily miracle. He it will be who will make your bed in
the chamber where Grand Duke Leopold slept, he will wait upon you at
dinner as though you were the Duke's Grace herself, and if your sojourn
be long he will make you happy, and if your stay be short you will go
with regret. For his pride is your delight, and he, unlike too many more
famous Tuscans, has not forgotten the past. Certainly he th