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I shall always remember that tall, hard-visaged woman, as she passed with firm step and nobly balanced figure about the streets of Catanzaro. To pity her would have been an insult. The glimpse I caught of her laborious life revealed to me something worthy of admiration; never had I seen a harassing form of discouragement so silently and strongly borne.
Eastward, above the slopes of Sila, stood a moon almost at its full, the yellow of an autumn leaf, on a sky soft-flushed with rose. In my geography it is written that between Catanzaro and the sea lie the gardens of the Hesperides. For half an hour the train slowly ascends. The carriages are of special construction, light and many-windowed, so that one has good views of the landscape.
After my morning's walk I sought the residence of Signor Pasquale Cricelli, to whom I carried a note of introduction. This gentleman holds the position of English Vice-Consul at Catanzaro, but it is seldom that he has the opportunity of conversing with English travellers; the courtesy and kindness with which he received me have a great part in my pleasant memory of the mountain town.
Even here, it seemed to me, the air was fresher. I lifted my eyes to the hills and seemed to feel the breezes of Catanzaro. The train was made up at Cotrone, and no undue haste appeared in our departure. When we were already twenty minutes late, there stepped into the carriage where I was sitting a good-humoured railway official, who smiled and greeted me.
One has had the same thought a hundred times in the same circumstances, but it is worth dwelling upon. Among these representative men, young and old, of Catanzaro, the tone of conversation was incomparably better than that which would rule in a cluster of English provincials met to enjoy their evening leisure.
It is the touch of tourist vulgarity. Listen to a Calabrian peasant singing as he follows his oxen along the furrow, or as he shakes the branches of his olive tree. That wailing voice amid the ancient silence, that long lament solacing ill-rewarded toil, comes from the heart of Italy herself, and wakes the memory of mankind. My thoughts turned continually to Catanzaro.
Perhaps some of these are what one sees in the Catanzaro Museum. The paternal government, hearing of this enterprise, claimed the site and sat down upon it; the exposed remains were once more covered up with soil. A goat-boy, a sad little fellow, sprang out of the earth as I dutifully wandered about here.
This, I knew, was the situation of Catanzaro, but one could not easily imagine by what sort of approach the city would be gained; in the thickening twilight, no trace of a road was discernible, and the flanks of the mountain, a ravine yawning on either hand, looked even more abrupt than the ascent immediately before me.
For a small consideration I was enabled to pass the burning hours of the afternoon in an improvised couch among its load of boards, admiring the scenery and the engineering feats that have carried a road through such difficult country, and thinking out some further polite remarks to be addressed to my twenty-dollar friend, in the event of our meeting at Catanzaro. . . .
Indeed, the town is strangely quiet, considering its size and aspect of importance; one has to search for a restaurant, and I doubt if more than one cafe exists. At my hotel the dining-room was a public trattoria, opening upon the street, but only two or three military men the eternal officers made use of it, and I felt a less cheery social atmosphere than at Taranto or at Catanzaro.
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