ith may
do something for our poor old universities.

Already, when I heard all these directions, they seemed to argue a
longer road than I had expected. It proved interminable.

It was now fully dark; the night was very cold from the height of the
hills; a dense dew began to fall upon the ground, and the sky was full
of stars. For hours I went on slowly down the lane that ran round the
hollow of the wooded mountain, wondering why I did not reach the
stream he spoke of. It was midnight when I came to the level, and yet
I heard no water, and did not yet see the tower against the sky.
Extreme fatigue made it impossible, as I thought, to proceed farther,
when I saw a light in a window, and went to it quickly and stood
beneath it. A woman from the window called me _Caro mio,_ which was
gracious, but she would not let me sleep even in the straw of the
barn.

I hobbled on in despair of the night, for the necessity of sleep was
weighing me down after four high hills climbed that day, and after the
rough ways and the heat and the continual marching.

I found a bridge which crossed the deep ravine they had told me of.
This high bridge was new, and had been built of fine stone, yet it was
broken and ruined, and a gap suddenly showed in the dark. I stepped
back from it in fear. The clambering down to the stream and up again
through the briars to regain the road broke me yet more, and when, on
the hill beyond, I saw the tower faintly darker against the dark sky,
I went up doggedly to it, fearing faintness, and reaching it where it
stood (it was on the highest ground overlooking the Secchia valley), I
sat down on a stone beside it and waited for the morning.

The long slope of the hills fell away for miles to where, by daylight,
would have lain the misty plain of Emilia. The darkness confused the
landscape. The silence of the mountains and the awful solemnity of the
place lent that vast panorama a sense of the terrible, under the dizzy
roof of the stars. Every now and again some animal of the night gave a
cry in the undergrowth of the valley, and the great rock of
Castel-Nuovo, now close and enormous--bare, rugged, a desert
place--added something of doom.

The hours were creeping on with the less certain stars; a very faint
and unliving grey touched the edges of the clouds. The cold possessed
me, and I rose to walk, if I could walk, a little farther.

What is that in the mind which, after (it may be) a slight
disappointment