I found my passport an easy key into the States of the Church, which all that rich alluvial country of Ferrara had now become.  I sold no crucifixes, but meditated profoundly upon them as I penetrated further into the great Lombard plain, and drew nearer to the cloudy mountains which seemed to me the guardians of my Land of Promise.  I hung one of them round my neck by a cord, and got much comfort and spiritual assistance from it.  My faith grew livelier as my needs increased; the sacred figure received my confidences and seemed to impart ghostly counsels.  I had a superstitious care to keep it always towards Tuscany, twisting the cord round so that the cross was on my back whenever I had occasion to face north instead of south.  Before going to sleep I was careful to stand it up so that the image pointed its bowed head in the right direction.  I felt sure that all would go well with me whilst I bore upon me this infallible mark of honest profession.  I was like Dante, it seemed to me, approaching the Mount of Purgation—­for which, in my own case, I put the Apennines.  Like Dante, it was necessary that all my stains should be done off, and that I should be marked by the Guardian of the Gate.  Well, here I bore my Sign—­the only sign tolerable for a Christian—­and before I had reached the last ridge of the mountains, before I could hope to look up to the shining eyes of my Beatrice, my brands of sin must one by one be wiped out.  Ah, that was very true; and was proved to be so before I had done my journeyings; but I knew not then in what manner.

A misfortune for me was that, playing a character, I could not refuse to sell my wares.  At Malalbergo, a small town between Ferrara and Bologna, I came into a region where famine and pestilence between them had been rife, stalking (dreadful reapers!) side by side, mowing as they went.  The people stormed the churches, and hung with wild cries for mercy about the shrines on the wayside.  They fell ravenously upon me—­and as I could not set a price upon my crucifixes, and it was soon known that I had them to give away, it follows that within half an hour after entering Malalbergo I was able to leave it with nothing to show for my declared profession but the cross about my neck.  So fearful was I of losing that one, I concealed my passport, and travelled henceforward under my own name and profession.  I had very little money left—­some three or four ducats, I think.  I determined to be careful of these, and to endeavour after some employment in Bologna, at once congenial and lucrative, which should not, however, deflect my designs from the speedy accomplishment of my pilgrimage.

CHAPTER IX

I AM HUMILIATED, LIFTED UP, AND LEFT CURIOUS

It had been my hope to be able to buy, exercising great economy, a new store of crucifixes in Bologna, and to find a country beyond it where I might, without scruple, sell them for the means of bare subsistence—­for I asked no more than that.  But even that much was not to be:  the city of St. Dominick’s last rest would not allow long resting-place to me.