For its name's sake alone, Herminia was prepared to admire the
antique Umbrian capital. And Alan loved it so much, and was so
determined she ought to love it too, that she was ready to be
pleased with everything in it. Until she arrived there--and then,
oh, poor heart, what a grievous disappointment! It was late April
weather when they reached the station at the foot of that high hill
where Augusta Perusia sits lording it on her throne over the wedded
valleys of the Tiber and the Clitumnus. Tramontana was blowing.
No rain had fallen for weeks; the slopes of the lower Apennines,
ever dry and dusty, shone still drier and dustier than Alan had yet
beheld them. Herminia glanced up at the long white road, thick in
deep gray powder, that led by endless zigzags along the dreary
slope to the long white town on the shadeless hill-top. At first
sight alone, Perugia was a startling disillusion to Herminia. She
didn't yet know how bitterly she was doomed hereafter to hate every
dreary dirty street in it. But she knew at the first blush that
the Perugia she had imagined and pictured to herself didn't really
exist and had never existed.
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