The Serchio—­a noble river, yet willful as a mountain-torrent—­flows round the embattled walls of Lucca, and falls into the Mediterranean below Pisa.  It is calm now, on this day of the great festival, sweeping serenely by rocky capes, and rounding into fragrant bays, where overarching boughs droop and feather.  But there is a sullen look about its current, that tells how wicked it can be, this Serchio, lashed into madness by winter storms, and the overflowing of the water-gates above, among the high Apennines—­at the Abbetone at San Marcello, or at windy, ice-bound Pracchia.

How fair are thy banks, O mountain-bordered Serchio!  How verdant with near wood and neighboring forest!  How gay with cottage groups—­open-galleried and garlanded with bunches of golden maize and vine-branches—­all laughing in the sun!  The wine-shops, too, along the road, how tempting, with snowy table-cloths spread upon dressers under shady arbors of lemon—­trees; pleasant odors from the fry cooking in the stove, mixing with the perfume of the waxy flowers!  Dear to the nostrils of the passers-by are these odors.  They snuff them up—­onions, fat, and macaroni, with delight.  They can scarcely resist stopping once for all here, instead of waiting for their journey’s end to eat at Lucca.

But the butterflies—­and they are many—­are wiser in their generation.  The butterflies have a festival of their own to-day.  They do not wait for any city.  They are fixed to no spot.  They can hold their festival anywhere under the blue sky, in the broad sunshine.

See how they dance among the flowers!  Be it spikes of wild-lavender, or yellow down within the Canterbury bell, or horn of purple cyclamens, or calyx of snowy myrtle, the soft bosom of tall lilies or glowing petals of red cloves—­nothing comes amiss to the butterflies.  They are citizens of the world, and can feast wherever fancy leads them.

Meanwhile, on comes the crowd, nearer and nearer to the city of their pilgrimage, laughing, singing, talking, smoking.  Your Italian peasant must sleep or smoke, excepting when he plays at morra (one, two, three, and away!).  Then he puts his pipe into his pocket.  The women are conversing in deep voices, in the patois of the various villages.  The men, more silent, search out who is fairest—­to lead her on the way, to kneel beside her at the shrine, and, most prized of all, to conduct her home.  Each village has its belle, each belle her circle of admirers.  Belles and beaux all have their own particular plan of diversion for the day.  For is it not a great day?  And is it not stipulated in many of the marriage contracts among the mountain tribes that the husband must, under a money penalty, conduct his wife to the festival of the Holy Countenance once at least in four years?  The programme is this:  First, they enter the cathedral, kneel at the glistening shrine of the black crucifix, kiss its golden slipper, and hear mass.  Then they will grasp such goods as the gods provide them, in street, cafe, eating-house, or day theatre; make purchases in the shops and booths, and stroll upon the ramparts.  Later, when the sun sinks westward over the mountains, and the deep canopy of twilight falls, they will return by the way that they have come, until the coming year.