Then she dreams of sending a letter in verses, which recall, how closely, the Swallow song of “The Princess”—­

    “O Rondinella che passi monti e colli,
    Se trovi l’amor mio, digli che venga;
    E digli:  son rimasta in questi poggi
    Come rimane la smarrita agnella. 
    E digli:  son rimasta senza nimo
    Come l’albero secco senza ’l cimo. 
    E digli:  son rimasta senza damo,
    Come l’albero secco senza il ramo. 
    E digli:  son rimasta abbandonata
    Come l’erbetta secca in sulle prata.”

At length she sends a letter with the help of the village scrivener, and in time gets an answer—­

    “Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano;
    Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia. 
    A me mi pare un poeta sovrano
    Tanto gli e sperto nella poesia ...”

Signor Tigri in his excellent collection of Canti Toscani, from which I have quoted, gives some examples too of these letters and their replies, but they are too long to set down here.

With spring the lover returns.  You may see the girls watching for the lads any day of spring in those high far woods through which the roads wind down to the plains.

    “Eccomi, bella, che son gia venuto
    Che li sospiri tuoi m’hanno chiamato,
    E tu credevi d’avermi perduto,
    Dal ben che ti volevo son tornato. 
    Quando son morto, mi farai un gran pianto;
    Dirai:  e morto chi mi amava tanto! 
    Quando son morto, un gran pianto farai,
    Padrona del mio cor sempre sarai.”

Then in the early summer days the promises are given, and long and long before autumn the good priest marries Beppino to his Annuziatina, and doubtless they live happy ever after in those quiet and holy places.

It is into this country of happiness you come, a happiness so vaguely musical, when, leaving Lucca in the summer heat, you climb into the Garfagnana.  For to your right Bagni di Lucca lies under Barga, with its church and great pulpit; and indeed, the first town you enter is Borgo a Mozzano by Serchio; then, following still the river, you come to Gallicano, and then by a short steep road to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana at the foot of the great pass.  The mountains have clustered round you, bare and threatening, and though you be still in the woods it is their tragic nudity you see all day long, full of the disastrous gestures of death, that can never change or be modified or recalled.  It is under these lonely and desolate peaks that the road winds to Piazza al Serchio.

Castelnuovo is a little city caught in a bend of Serchio, which it spans by a fantastic high bridge that leaps across the shrunken torrent.  A mere huddle of mediaeval streets and piazzas in an amphitheatre of mountains, its one claim on our notice is that here is a good inn, kept by a strange tragical sort of man with a beautiful wife, the only sunshine in that forbidding place.  She lies there like a jewel