vantage high above
the wood, rose up before me. My mind, still full of Bazzi's
frescoes, peopled the wilderness with grave monastic forms, and
gracious, young-eyed faces of boyish novices.

_MONTEPULCIANO_

I

For the sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of
Tuscan hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without
circumlocution what does not appear upon the time-tables of the line
from Empoli to Rome. Montepulciano has a station; but this railway
station is at the distance of at least an hour and a half's drive
from the mountain upon which the city stands.

The lumbering train which brought us one October evening from
Asciano crawled into this station after dark, at the very moment
when a storm, which had been gathering from the south-west, burst in
deluges of rain and lightning. There was, however, a covered
carriage going to the town. Into this we packed ourselves, together
with a polite Italian gentleman who, in answer to our questions,
consulted his watch, and smilingly replied that a little half-hour
would bring us easily to Montepulciano. He was a native of the
place. He knew perfectly well that he would be shut up with us in
that carriage for two mortal hours of darkness and downpour. And
yet, such is the irresistible impulse in Italians to say something
immediately agreeable, he fed us with false hopes and had no fear of
consequences. What did it matter to him if we were pulling out our
watches and chattering in well-contented undertone about _vino
nobile_, _biftek_, and possibly a _polio arrosto_, or a dish of
_tord_? At the end of the half-hour, as he was well aware,
self-congratulations and visions of a hearty supper would turn to
discontented wailings, and the querulous complaining of defrauded
appetites. But the end of half an hour was still half an hour off;
and we meanwhile were comfortable.

The night was pitchy dark, and blazing flashes of lightning showed a
white ascending road at intervals. Rain rushed in torrents,
splashing against the carriage wheels, which moved uneasily, as
though they could but scarcely stem the river that swept down upon
them. Far away above us to the left, was one light on a hill, which
never seemed to get any nearer. We could see nothing but a chasm of
blackness below us on one side, edged with ghostly olive-trees, and
a high bank on the other. Sometimes a star swam out of the drifting
clouds; but then the rain hissed down again, and the