But the ride, nowhere dangerous, though demanding some strong faith in the sure-footedness of Antonio’s steeds, is not an easy one.  The sun was beating with unmitigated glare on those utterly shadeless hill-sides.  It was out of the question to attempt anything beyond a walk.  The sides of the gullies, which had to be ascended and descended, though never reaching to the picturesque proportions of precipices, were yet sufficiently steep and rough to make very fatiguing riding for a lady unaccustomed to such exercise.  And George Eliot was in no very robust condition of health at the time.  And despite his well dissembled anxiety I could see that Lewes was not easy respecting her capability of resisting the heat, the fatigue, and the unwonted exercise.  But her cheerfulness and activity of interest never failed her for an instant.  Her mind “made increment of everything.”  Nor even while I led her horse down some of the worst descents did the exigencies of the path avail to interrupt conversation, full of thought and far-reaching suggestiveness, as her talk ever was.

At last we reached the spot where the territory of the monastery commences; and it is one that impresses itself on the imagination and the memory in a measure not likely to be forgotten.  The change is like a pantomime transformation scene!  The traveller passes without the slightest intermediate gradation from the dreary scene which has been described, into the shade and the beauty of a region of magnificent and well-managed forest!  The bodily delight of passing from the severe glare of the sun into this coolness, welcome alike to the skin and to the eye, was very great.  And to both my companions, but especially to George Eliot, the great beauty of the scene we entered on gave the keenest pleasure.

Assuredly Saint Romuald in selecting a site for his Camaldolese did not derogate from the apparently instinctive wisdom which seems to have inspired the founders of monasteries of every order and in every country of Europe.  Invariably the positions of the religious houses were admirably well chosen; and that of Camaldoli is no exception to the rule.  The convent is not visible from the spot where the visitor enters the forest boundary which marks the limit of the monastic domain.  Nearly an hour’s ride through scenery increasing in beauty with each step, where richly green lawns well stocked with cattle are contrasted wonderfully with the arid desolation so recently left behind, has still to be done ere the convent’s hospitable door is reached.

The convent door, however, in our case was not reached, for the building used for the reception of visitors, and called the forestieria, occupies its humble position by the road side a hundred yards or so before the entrance to the monastery is reached.  There Antonio halted his cavalcade, and while showing us our quarters with all the air of a master, sent one of his attendant lads to summon the padre forestieraio—­the monk deputed by the society to receive strangers.