The roads going to and fro between the cream-colored stone walls of
the surrounding country were unsparingly hot. I can feel now the flash
of sunbeams that made me expect to curl up and die like a bit of
vegetation in a flame. I tried to feel cooler when I saw the peasant
women approaching, bent under their loads of wheat or of brush. If
they had no shading load, it made me gasp to observe that their Tuscan
hats, as large as cart-wheels and ostensibly meant to shadow their
faces, were either dangling in their hands or flapping backward
uselessly. It seemed to be no end of a walk to Florence, and the drive
thither was also detestable,--all from the heat and dust, and probably
only at that time of year. The views of many-colored landscape, hazy
with steaming fields, were lovely if you could once muster the energy
to gaze across the high road-walls when the thoroughfare sank clown a
declivity. After a while there were cottages, outside of which ancient
crones sat knitting like the wind, or spinning as smoothly as
machines, by the aid of a distaff. Little girls, who were
full-fledged peasant women in everything but size, pecked away at
their knitting of blue socks, proud of their lately won skill and
patient of the undesired toil. They were so small and comely and
conformable, and yet conveyed such an idea of volcanic force ready to
rebel, that they entranced me. Further inside the heart of the city
upstarted the intoxications of sin and the terrible beggars with their
maimed children.
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