The drive through that eucalyptus wood here described remains one of the most curious impressions of those Roman days. It was like passing through a Dante circle--the first circle of all, of Limbo, where Virgil met the poet; an unsubstantial wraith-like world, full of a perpetual whisper and murmur:
“Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, Non avea pianto, ma che di sospiri, Che l’aura eterna facevan tremare:
E cio avvenia di duol senza martiri, Ch’avean le turbe, ch’eran molte e grandi, E d’infanti, e di femmine e di vivi.”
Whether the sky became really overcast as we entered into these mysterious precincts, or whether the height of the trees shadowed the narrow way, certainly there was a dimness about us; not a positive darkness but a negation of light, even as the chill that enfolded us was not so much a cold as a cessation of heat.
But through the gates of the monastery courtyard we saw sunshine again, and white pigeons strutting about the cobbles, picking and preening themselves--a wonderful picture of peace. It is a consecrated spot; a place the most aloof, the most severe, the most denuded of all earthly joys that we have ever seen; a stage on the arid way of pilgrims forging determinedly by the shortest cut to heaven. And yet it is full of sweetness. As from a mountain ledge, the world must lie so far below these Trappists that it is no longer seen, scarcely divined behind its own vapours. No use looking down: looking up--there is the blue sky, and there are the peaks pointing heavenward, still to be conquered. There is very little comfort for the traveller, but he has a strange gladness. He is cradled in ethereal silences. The balm of majestic solitude bathes his soul; his spirit is cheered by an air as pure as it is vivifying, and he knows that he will climb the peaks.
_July 4._--Mrs. McComfort, our cook, has a brother on the Clyde. He writes an extraordinary account of the effort expected of, and given by, the able workman.
“It may be, miss,” says Mrs. McComfort to the Signorina, her chief confidant, “he’ll be called up for a job on a ship that’s just come in, and that’ll mean that he and the rest of them will be at it from seven in the morning till eight the next morning. Yes, miss, all night, as well as all day. And then they’ll come home, and it’s too weary to eat they are, and they’ll just roll themselves up and fall asleep, as tired as dogs; and when they’ve slept a bit, maybe they can get a little food down. And then it’s off back again to work! And that’ll go on till the job’s done. And when the battleships come in, the steamers do be waiting all night upon the Clyde, to take the men up to them, it’s that urgent. And, oh, miss, how they do love the ships they’ve built! And when one is lost, you’d never believe the grief there is, with the men crying and saying: ‘It’s my old lady’s gone, my poor old lady!’”