No woods, no moss, no coolness, no greenery;
all nature toned down to one monotonous grayness. And this dreary
desert was indeed the place where her baby must be born, the baby
predestined to regenerate humanity!
Oh, why did they ever leave that enchanted Florence!
Meanwhile Alan had got together the luggage, and engaged a
ramshackle Perugian cab; for the public vehicles of Perugia are
perhaps, as a class, the most precarious and incoherent known to
science. However, the luggage was bundled on to the top by Our
Lady's grace, without dissolution of continuity; the lean-limbed
horses were induced by explosive volleys of sound Tuscan oaths to
make a feeble and spasmodic effort; and bit by bit the sad little
cavalcade began slowly to ascend the interminable hill that rises
by long loops to the platform of the Prefettura.
That drive was the gloomiest Herminia had ever yet taken. Was it
the natural fastidiousness of her condition, she wondered, or was
it really the dirt and foul smells of the place that made her
sicken at first sight of the wind-swept purlieus? Perhaps a little
of both; for in dusty weather Perugia is the most endless town to
get out of in Italy; and its capacity for the production of
unpleasant odors is unequalled no doubt from the Alps to Calabria.
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