FOOTNOTES: 

[136] Cf.  Dino Campagni, Cronica Fiorentina, Book 1, p. 62.  When appointed Podesta of Pistoja, Giano rather raised strife than pacified the factions.  Cf. also Villari, History of Florence, p. 445.

[137] Strictly speaking, she never conquered Siena; Charles V did that.

[138] In the Middle Age, Cortona and Arezzo were not on the road to Rome, but so far as Florence was concerned, Siena, her holding that she acquired these cities to keep Via Aretina open.  Cf.  Repetti, v. 715.

[139] That Pistoja was not on the great Via Francesca goes for nothing, she threatened it.

[140] There is a most excellent little book, Nuova Guida di Pistoja, by Cav.  Prof.  Giuseppe Tigri (Pistoja, 1896), which I strongly recommend to the reader’s notice.  I wish to acknowledge my debt to it.  Unlike so many guides, it is full of life itself, and makes the city live for us also.

[141] Bestia, probably a nickname of Vanni Fucci’s; cf. Inferno, xxiv, 125.

[142] Inferno, xxiv. 125, 126; xxv. 13, 14.

[143] “Cino impugns the verdicts of Dante’s Commedia,” a sonnet translated by D.G.  Rossetti.

Note.—­No English writers have written well of Pistoja, for first they always write from a Florentine point of view, and then they quit too soon.  I plead guilty too.  The key-note to Pistoja is given in that saying of Macchiavelli’s, that the Florentine people “per fuggire il nome di crudele lascio distruggere Pistoia.”  Il Principe, cap. xvii.  Cf. also Discorsi iii. 27.  It is, of course, all a matter of Panciatichi and Cancellieri.  Cf.  Zdekauer Statuti Pistoiesi dei Secoli xii. e xiii.

XXIX.  LUCCA

Who that has ever seen the Pistojese the Val di Lima, the country of S. Marcello, the Val di Reno, the country about Pracchia, does not love it—­the silent ways through the chestnut woods, the temperance of the hill country after the heat of the cities, the country ways after the ways of the town?  And there are songs there too.  But to-day my way lies through the valley, Val di Nievole, towards Lucca, lost in the plain at the gate of the Garfagnana.  Serravalle, with its old gateway and high Rocca, which fell to Castruccio Castracani; Monsummano, far on the left, with its old church in the valley; Montecatini, with its mineral springs; Buggiano, and Pescia with its mulberries, where the Church of S. Francesco hides and keeps its marvellous portrait of S. Francesco—­these are the towns at the foot of the mountains that I shall pass before I turn into the plain between the island hills and come at last to Lucca, Lucca l’Ombrosa, round whose high ramparts that have stood a thousand sieges now in whispering ranks there stand the cool planes of the valley, the shadowy trees that girdle the city with a cintola of green and gold.