Together they all mount the zigzag mountain-pass, that turns short off from the right bank of the valley of the Serchio, toward Corellia.  The peasants sing choruses as they trudge upward, taking short cuts among the trees at the angles of the zigzag.  The evening lights come and go among the chestnut-trees and on the soft, short grass.  Here a fierce flick of sunshine shoots across the road; there deep gloom darkens an angle into which the coach plunges, the peasants, grouped on the top of a bank overhead, standing out darkly in the yellow glow.

It is a lonely pass in the very bosom of the Apennines, midway between Lucca and Modena.  In winter the road is clogged with snow; nothing can pass.  Now, there is no sound but the singing of water-falls, and the trickle of water-courses, the chirrup of the cicala, not yet gone to its rest—­and the murmur of the hot breezes rustling in the distant forest.

No sound—­save when sudden thunder-pelts wake awful echoes among the great brotherhood of mountain-tops—­when torrents burst forth, pouring downward, flooding the narrow garden ledges, and tearing away the patches of corn and vineyard, the people’s food.  Before—­behind—­around—­arise peaks of purple Apennines, cresting upward into the blue sky—­an earthen sea dashed into sudden breakers, then struck motionless.  In front, in solitary state, rises the lofty summit of La Pagna, casting off its giant mountain-fellows right and left, which fade away into a golden haze toward Modena.

High up overhead, crowning a precipitous rock, stands Corellia, a knot of browned, sun-baked houses, flat-roofed, open-galleried, many-storied, nestling round a ruined castle, athwart whose rents the ardent sunshine darts.  This ruined castle and the tower of an ancient Lombard church, heavily arched and galleried with stone, gleaming out upon a surface of faded brickwork, form the outline of the little town.  It is inclosed by solid walls, and entered by an archway so low that the marchesa’s driver has to dismount as he passes through.  The heavy old carriage rumbles in with a hollow noise; the horse’s hoofs strike upon the rough stones with a harsh, loud sound.

The whole town of Corellia belongs to the marchesa.  It is an ancient fief of the Guinigi.  Legend says that Castruccio Castracani was born here.  This is enough for the marchesa.  As in the palace of Lucca, she still—­even at lonely Corellia—­lives as it were under the shadow of that great ancestral name.

Lonely Corellia!  Yes, it is lonely!  The church bells, high up in the Lombard tower sound loudly the matins and the eventide.  They sound louder still on the saints days and festivals.  With the festivals pass summer and winter, both dreary to the poor.  Children are born, and marriage-flutes wake the echoes of the mountain solitudes—­and mothers weep, hearing them, remembering their young days and present pinching want.  The aged groan, for joy to them comes like a fresh pang!