Another Encounter What a contrast in social consciousness this is
with another rustic meeting which I had during the hot April weather. We had climbed up from the village of Varenna to the alpine foothills behind Lake Como. The sun of noonday threw slanting beams down the slope where the watershed began over the top of a second range of hills. Through gaps down the widening valley we could see a stretch of the lake, with a vaporetto moving like a mosquito on the water, at the head of a tiny " v "-shaped wake. An enormous solitude surrounded us like a quilt pinned down by the myriad chirruping of grasshoppers hidden in the sea of white crocuses, cyclamen and shabby hellebore. Bushes of wild viburnum perfumed the air ; air already fragrant with its own rarity.
We were preparing to attack our luncheon when we were startled by a cry from higher up the hill. There, in the scrub, stood a woman with a basket cornucopia on her back, piled with brushwood. She was followed by another. One was old, the other young and pregnant. The cry brought two men out of a dump of trees where they had been working. We now realised that the sound of axes had been an unnoticed accompaniment to ,the music of the little brothers of La Fontaine. TM, men waited, and the women slowly made their way, moving in a curve that led them near enough to permit of a passing examination of the strangers. We waved our hands, and the old woman approached, with the young mother more reluctantly behind her. "Allemuni ?" she said, with dull glint in her voice, and caution in her eyes. " English," I replied. The result was wonderful. She turned, threw up both arms toward the hills, and shouted " Inglesi 1, Inglesi 1 ". Down went the tools, and both men came stumbling down the slope at full pelt. The four gathered round us, and we dispensed wrapped barley-sugars, while listening to a tale of imprisonment. The narration was illustrated by crossed wrists, to indicate fetters. But we had heard the same tale from waiters and' porters ; in fact, from most of the male population of Tuscany.
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