I thought we could not be far from the centre of the earth, when he
suddenly turned aside into a vast cloister with high arched openings
and led me to one of them. Oh, the beauty, the glory, the wonder of
the sight! We were halfway down the mountain-side, hanging between the
blue heaven and the billowy Umbrian plain, with its verdure and its
azure fusing into tints of dreamy softness as they vanished in the
deep violet shadows of thick-crowding mountains, on whose surfaces
and gorges lay changing colors of the superbest intensity. Poplars and
willows showed silvery among the tender green of other deciduous trees
in their fresh spring foliage and the deep velvet of the immortal
cypresses and the blossoming shrubs, which looked like little puffs
of pink and white cloud resting on the bosom of the valley. A small,
clear mountain-stream wound round the headland to join the Tiber,
which divides the landscape with its bare, pebbly bed. It was almost
the same view that one has from twenty places in Perugia, but coming
out upon it as from the bowels of the earth, framed in its huge stone
arch, it was like opening a window from this world into Paradise.

Slowly and lingeringly I left the cloister, and panted up the many
steps back to the piazza to await my companion and the carriage which
was to take us back to Perugia. The former was already there, and in a
few minutes a small omnibus came clattering down the stony street, and
stopping beside us the driver informed us that he had come for us. Our
surprise and wrath broke forth. Hours before we had bespoken a little
open carriage, and it was this heavy, jarring, jolting vehicle which
they had sent to drive us ten miles across the hills. The driver
declared, with truly Italian volubility and command of language and
gesture, that there was no other means of conveyance to be had; that
it was excellent, swift, admirable; that it was what the signori
always went from Assisi to Perugia in; that, in fine, we had engaged