on you
a blessed hour when you will be convinced as by a miracle, and you
will suddenly understand the _redintegratio amoris (amoris
redintegratio,_ a Latin phrase). But this hour you will not receive in
the rain on the Emilian Way.

Here then, next day, just outside a town called Borgo, past the middle
of morning, the rain ceased.

Its effect was still upon the slippery and shining road, the sky was
still fast and leaden, when, in a distaste for their towns, I skirted
the place by a lane that runs westward of the houses, and sitting upon
a low wall, I looked up at the Apennines, which were now plain above
me, and thought over my approaching passage through those hills.

But here I must make clear by a map the mass of mountains which I was
about to attempt, and in which I forded so many rivers, met so many
strange men and beasts, saw such unaccountable sights, was imprisoned,
starved, frozen, haunted, delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed
in Tuscany--in a word, where I had the most extraordinary and
unheard-of adventures that ever diversified the life of man.

The straight line to Rome runs from Milan not quite through Piacenza,
but within a mile or two of that city. Then it runs across the first
folds of the Apennines, and gradually diverges from the Emilian Way.
It was not possible to follow this part of the line exactly, for there
was no kind of track. But by following the Emilian Way for several
miles (as I had done), and by leaving it at the right moment, it was
possible to strike the straight line again near a village called
Medesano.

Now on the far side of the Apennines, beyond their main crest, there
happens, most providentially, to be a river called the Serchio, whose
valley is fairly straight and points down directly to Rome. To follow
this valley would be practically to follow the line to Rome, and it
struck the Tuscan plain not far from Lucca.

But to get from the Emilian Way over the eastern slope of the
Apennines' main ridge and crest, to where the Serchio rises on the
western side, is a very difficult matter. The few roads across the
Apennines cut my track at right angles, and were therefore useless. In
order to strike the watershed at the sources of the Serchio it was
necessary to go obliquely across a torrent and four rivers (the Taro,
the Parma, the Enza, and the Secchia), and to climb the four spurs
that divided them; crossing each nearer to the principal chain as I
advanced until, after