Perhaps the hotels are not good: we have never tried them. But the
market is excellent for a mountain-city, and in the autumn figs and
grapes are cheap and abundant. There are apartments to be let, and
servants to be had who, with a little instruction, soon learn to cook
in a civilized manner.
We have a fancy that there is a different moral atmosphere in a town
surrounded by olive trees and one set in vineyards, the former being
more sober and reserved, the latter more joyous and expansive. The
latter may, indeed, carry its spirit too far--like the little city of
Zagorolo near Rome, where the inhabitants are noted at the same time
for the strength and excellence of their wines and for the
quarrelsomeness of their dispositions. Palestrina, a little way off on
the hillside, with a flowing skirt of vines all about it, breathes
laughter in its very air. One may sit in Bernardini's--known to all
visitors to the city of Fortune--and hear the travellers who come there
laugh over mishaps which they would have growled over anywhere else.
The comparison might be made of many other towns.
Asisi is set in a world of olives. They swing like smoke from a censer
all through the corn and grain of the plain; they roll up the hills and
mountains, climbing the almost perpendicular heights like goats; they
crawl through the ravines; they cover the tiny plateaus set between the
crowded hills; and plantations of slim young trees are set through the
city, bending like long feathers and turning a soft silver as the wind
passes over them.
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