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Updated: June 18, 2025
No, it was not he; it was a friend of his; and finally the friend was produced, <i>en costume de ville</i>, but equally jovial,and Italian enough a brave Lucernese, who had spent half of his life between Bellinzona and Camerlata. For ten francs this worthy man's perch behind the luggage was made mine as far as Bellinzona, and we separated with reciprocal wishes for good weather on the morrow.
The lake and the frontier villages, a white puff of steam on the distant railway to Luino, the busy boats and steamers trailing triangular wakes of foam, the long vista eastward towards battlemented Bellinzona, the vast mountain distances, now tinged with sunset light, behind this nearer landscape, and the southward waters with remote coast towns shining dimly, waters that merged at last in a luminous golden haze, made a broad panoramic spectacle.
Here is the scene: a gloomy stone building for the diligence company; two great yellow diligences, empty and unharnessed in the area before; one other diligence, packed full, with the horses' heads turned northward, and the blue-nosed Swiss clerk calling out the names of passengers; a half-dozen cabriolets looking at each other irresolutely and facing all possible ways; two score of unwashed loungers, in red neck-kerchiefs and velvet jackets, smoking rank, rakish, black cigars; several streets of equal crookedness and filthiness abutting against a grimy church, whence beggars, old women, and priests emerge continually; and far above all, as if suspended in the air, a grim, battlemented castle, a defence, as it seems, against the snowy mountains which march upon Bellinzona from every side to crush its orchards and vineyards and drown it in the marshes of Lago Maggiore.
My friend had as many quips and cranks as a Neapolitan; we walked together for an hour under the chestnuts, while the coach was plodding up from Bellinzona, and he never stopped singing till we reached a little wine-house where he got his mouth full of bread and cheese.
It was Bellinzona; but passing through, we came out presently on the margin of an immense sheet of water, and it was only in Locarno on the edge of Lago Maggiore, when dawn was paling the eastern sky, that Jack at last drew rein. No one was tired; no one wanted to rest.
In this year, moreover, in other outlying districts, even outside German-speaking populations, the movement flickered. Thus the traveller between the town of Bellinzona, in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, and the Bernardino Pass, in Canton Graubünden, may see to-day an imposing ruin, situated on an eminence in the narrow valley just above the small Italian-speaking town of Misox.
Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Berne, Basle, and Zurich; three are "gymnasial," viz. St. Gall, Lucerne, and Bellinzona. The membership of the society is steadily increasing. In July, 1916, it was 575; but now, nearly a year later, it is 700. The organisation has a monthly review, "Centralblatt des Zofingervereins," issued in French, German, and Italian.
But the pink and yellow houses shimmered through the gentle gloom, and Italy began in broken syllables to whisper that she was at hand. For the rest of the way to Bellinzona her voice was muffled in the grey of evening, and I was half vexed to lose the charming sight of the changing vegetation.
I who had all that planned out, and had so nearly done it! I who had cut a path across Europe like a shaft, and seen so many strange places! now to have to recite all the litany of the vulgar; Bellinzona, Lugano, and this and that, which any railway travelling fellow can tell you. Not till Como should I feel a man again... Indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up one's sword.
Pisgah on the road to glory, Mr. Simp on the smooth sea, Mr. Freckle in the debtor's jail, Mr. Risque behind his four-in-hand, and Mr. Lees in the charity grave, let us sit with the two remaining colonists in the cabriolet at Bellinzona; for it is the month of April, and they are to cross the great St. Gothard en route for Paris.
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