It is delightful to walk under the olive trees in
early summer, when they hang full of strings of tiny cream-colored
blossoms. In winter these blossoms will have changed to a small black
fruit. The trees are as rugged as the roughest old apple trees, and
many of them are supported only on a hollow half-circle of trunk or on
two or three mere sticks. One wonders how these slender fragments of
trunk can support that spreading weight above, especially in wind and
tempest, and how that wealth of blossom and fruit can draw sufficient
sustenance through such narrow and splintered channels; but the olive
is tough, and the oil that runs in its veins for blood keeps it ever
vigorous.
True to my fancy--which, indeed, it helped to nourish--Asisi is a
serious town. It has even an air of gentle melancholy, which is not,
however, depressing, but which inclines to thoughtfulness and study.
Travellers are familiar with its aspect--the crowning citadel with the
ring of green turf between it and the city, which stretches across the
shoulders of the mountain, row above row of gray houses, with the
magnificent pile of the church and convent of St. Francis at its
western extremity, clasped to the steep rock with a hold that an
earthquake could scarcely loosen.
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